Droidcon R2-MKE Gonk

The task

At our droid builders convention (Droid Con) they held a Gonk droid build off. each team had three days to build a Gonk. A Gonk is a power droid, essentially a large walking battery, they were used to power equipment and vehicles. we were only given a black CNC cut gonk shell. and the rest was up to us.

The plan

We brain stormed a lot of ideas, some were so crazy it would have never worked. I jokingly said lets make a CGI gonk and paint it green. CGI is computer generated images, they used this a lot in the prequels of Star wars. We then came up with the idea of what if they used a gonk droid as a CGI stand in for Alan Tudyk. We chose Alan because in "Rogue One a Star Wars Story" Alan Tudyk played a Droid named K2SO. While playing this charter he wore a motion capture suit which allowed K2SO to be added in CGI later. luckily Kevin Z. has access to a large printer at his work that could print off large decals. We found the rest of the Greeblies at Milwaukee maker space. Greeblies are random bits and pieces that add charter and makes the item look real.

The Build

The build took place during the off time of Droid Con, over the three days we had to work we ran into some issues. We had thought the shell included legs and feet. We had to do a hardware store run. We got some PVC pipe and flanges, we also got two pegboard bins that if we put holes in they looked like the feet of a gonk. The bins are a perfect representation of a found part, found parts are parts that are used that are lying around and used in other ways.

The Final Product

The Gonk came together quite nicely. It was a great fun build with a great group of people. I cant wait for Star Wars Celebration in April, Where Alan will be on display.

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