Then in late June, an "Official call for droids" came out on Astromech.net. To which I was like " wait, my droid is still not finished" how can I apply? The call for droids is basically the group's way of organizing who will get to display their pride and joy in a themed room especially for us droid builders. So I applied and furnished the pictures I had, but sadly was turned down, naturally my droid wasn't complete.
As the show drew closer I discovered from reading on the Astromech forum that they didn't turn away finished droids, and that I would, at the very least, be able to park my droid in the builders storage room during the evenings. So somewhere around the late fall of 2016 I decided I'd need to complete my astromech and get it to the show regardless.
At the time I had probably 30% of the build remaining. I had started work on this project back in the fall of 2013, holy smokes it had been nearly 3 years. I had the foot shells to finish and mount on the drive system. I had the battery boxes to complete and the foot hoses to mount. Then the dome still needed the radar eye installed. Lastly the entire body needed to have all of the parts 3d printed and installed, and the skins mounted and painted. It was a huge amount of work to wrap up in just a few months, and with the holidays thrown in for good measure.
So I started by writing everything down in notepad on my phone. I called it something like "Hella important tasks to finish" . I tried to make it as detailed as possible, and as I went along I checked each part finished. This turned out to be a life saver. So I worked as efficiently as I could, working on weekends and after work as often as my schedule would permit. My build log on Astromech.net was kept up as well as I could, but mainly I focused on getting the work done, and catching up the blog was secondary. As you can see, I didn't add anything to this blog during that time.
Anyway it all worked out. I finished up the droid, I named R2-J8, just a few days before the start of SWCO 2017. Those extra few days allowed me the time to add weathering to the droid, which I think turned out better than expected.
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| R2-J8 |
Star Wars Celebration 2017 was a blast. I can post more about it later, but I have to say that all the hard work of making the droid was rewarded by all the compliments, not only from fans but other droid builders as well. Naturally some of the best builders in the world were there, I was both humbled by their amazing talent and at the same time, experienced a sense of pride at having my work displayed along with theirs. The fans were amazing. Best of all were the littlest fans. To them, R2-J8 was real, and completely magic.
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| R2-J8 receiving secret plans |
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| R2-J8 falls into the hands of the empire |
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| R2-J8 sold on the Jawa Market |
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| R2-J8 on display in R2 builders room |
