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serenamorgan · ‎18-07-2016

I was at SW Celebration on both Friday and Sunday over the weekend.

The autograph hall was a little underwhelming for me as there was nobody there that I haven't already met and although under different circumstances I may have been happy to add a few of them to other photos, the prices they were charging meant I would rather wait for them to be a Showmasters event.

This meant that the only autograph opportunities for me was going to be either getting lucky and seeing some of the panelists walking around or hanging out at the back of the stage to try and get them.
As it turned out, this happened to be the case. I managed to get 6 different people to sign on Friday, one, Steve Sansweet was easy as he had a stand and was signing for free, however, if you wanted one of his photos it was £5 so I got one of his and one of mine signed:

Next I went to try and find the back of the stage as the Ahsoka panel was about to end and I was keen to get Dave Filoni and Ashley Eckstein but stupidly I was waiting at the wrong side of the stage hence missed them and despite my best efforts wasn't able to find them for the rest of the day.

I wandered back round the front about 15 minutes before the next panel and just happened to spot Lee Towersey who kindly agreed to sign for me and also pointed out that Oliver Steeples was behind me. They both signed but were in a rush to get to the panel so there was no photo op. In fact they refused to sign for the guy who came up after me as there were running late so I got really lucky. I made a point of watching where they went so that I now knew where the back of the stage was.

Just a quick story about Oliver and Lee for those that don't know. They were both fans and droid builder enthusiasts when they were on a droid building stand at Celebration in Germany. At the event their talent got spotted by Lucasfilm and they were subsequently hired to work of The Force Awakens. Both of them worked on the R2 units on the film and also a lot of other droids.

I then went and watched the droids panel but left 5 mins early to try and get Josh Lee and Matt Fenton as they came out. Matt and Josh both worked on the electronics dept and one of the many characters they worked on was BB8, both designing and operating all 7 units used for filming (with the help of a puppeteer on a couple of the units). For the fully electronical BB8, one would operate the body whilst the other worked the head.

They were rushing off to be somewhere else when they came out but promised they would come back and sign later and I am pleased to say were as good as there word:

and on a photo I had already got signed by Lee and Oliver earlier on:

a blurry pic with Matt Fenton

and a fully electronic BB8 that they were operating at the event:

and my last signature was from Doug Chiang who worked as a concept artist on The Phantom Menace and has since gone on to become a big part of Lucasfilm, and is now Vice President Executive Creative Director and has played a big part in bringing the new Rogue One movie to screen:

his bodyguard was ensuring he only signed one each so I added him to my Rogue One photo already signed by Felicity Jones

I attended on my own on Friday but on Sunday we went as a family so rather than autographs concentrated on having fun, here are a few pics from the day: