- DAY 1 - MAY 24 001 > I had a LOT of FUN designing these signs. First thing when you arrived at our booth this year was again our huge WELCOME sign and instruction sheet. Along side it were mini posters explaining the other little perks I was able to offer for this years convention builders.
- DAY 1 - MAY 24 002 > Duke Da Man !!! After winning 1 of the 8 slots in the ILM Lunch and Tour with Frank contest, Duke and I hot it off from the start and offered his help at the show if I needed it. How can I say no to a face like that 🙂 LOL. Duke has been helping me and greeting the fans at every convention Diorama booth ever since.
- DAY 1 - MAY 24 003 > Welcome to Endor ! So the first thing fans this time was pick up their EXCLUSIVE I.D. Badges. This was the first time I offered these and hand made each of them myself in my hotel room the night before the show LOL. These were not only cool way to identify you were a builder but had SPECIAL powers if you were lucky enough 🙂 More on that later... You also got our FIRST Celebration SWAG Pin. The colours turned out a little darker than expected but it was cool to have a real collectible to hand out to the first 100 fans every day.
- DAY 1 - MAY 24 004 > Select what build you wanted to make and Still to this day - 20 years later, families are still in SHOCK that all the art supplies are FREE and were paid by Lucasfilm.
- DAY 1 - MAY 24 005 > One of the VERY SPECIAL PERKS of having been hired to work at ILM (2007) was that I had all kinds of access to goodies not available to the general public. So as a Star Wars fan myself, I thought of how cool it would be for you guys to have a chance to WIN some of these ultra rare swag prizes. Every morning at 11:38 (wonder why that time was so important ;P) the soundtrack would roar the THX logo musical cue to let people know to gather round for the draw. Man that was a LOT of FUN. Did you win one of the items given away ? Leave your memories in the comments...
- DAY 1 - MAY 24 006 > One of the other ideas I had for the show was to use a miniature train to mount Hasbro Speeder Bikes and have a LIVE chase in between the fan built trees. They didn't zoom as fast as in the movie but it was a very cool thing for fans to discover when they spotted them passing by.
- DAY 1 - MAY 24 007 > For the very first and ONLY time, Lucasfilm printed my T-Shirts at the same store as their own and included my design for sale online at the Star Wars Celebration Store. How cool is that in a fan geek perspective 🙂 For those at the show, you had a chance to win some every 2 hours until supplies lasted. I still have mine today even if a little - OK A LOT - Tighter around the waist LOL. Do you still have yours ?
- DAY 1 - MAY 24 008 > Last of the Lucasfilm perks were MYSTERY prizes given to me by Lucasfilm to hand out to the fans. I should have taken a photo because I really don't recal what the poster was, likely a LucasArts game I think it was and the Sunday mystery were some Pens.
- DAY 1 - MAY 24 009 > Now THIS is the part that really excited me this year. Being an official ILM, Lucasfim employee I was now able to access items the general public could not get or purchase at the company store. This got me thinking to add a LOGO on the rear of select badges. If you flipped your card and saw a ILM, Lucasfilm or Lucas Arts logo - you would win a prize from one of their bins. Especially cool were some ILM CREW GEAR and T-shirts as well as Lucas Arts games for the GameCube, Playstation and Xbox consoles.
- DAY 1 - MAY 24 010 > If you didn't see a Lucasfilm company logo on the ID Badge that you hand selected from the card pile, you were still in luck for cool stuff as your personal ID Number would be able to have you win other prizes all through the show.
- DAY 1 - MAY 24 011 > I am pleased to say that Star Wars fans are the best and that no one tried to cheat and pretend they had not gotten a badge yet after not getting one of the logos in the rear. It was a truly special year and remains very dear to my heart. A bucket list check for sure.
- DAY 1 - MAY 24 012 > So back to the convention, this lucky fan just chose her ID badge with a Lucasfilm logo.
- DAY 1 - MAY 24 013 > She was able to look through the bins and select any of the prizes that hit her fancy. Be it one of the T-Shirt, hat, clothes items or...
- DAY 1 - MAY 24 014 > Any of the awesome toy donations that were in stores that summer. Galoob was on fire back then with their Micro Machine and Action Fleet vehicles.
- DAY 1 - MAY 24 015 > You can see another winner to the left checkin out ILM T-Shirts for his son.
- DAY 1 - MAY 24 016 > Thursday was FAN DAY and thus a HALF DAY but that didn't stop fans from waiting until tomorrow to start building. And if you are wondering what a NiubNiub is LOL That was my alter ego and first website before rebranding to todays modern DioramaWorkshop.Com.
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DAY 1 - MAY 24 017 > So the main build was to start with a Endor tree. You can't plant a forest without them right ? 🙂 The cool thing is that even if you didn't want to spend extra days to make a Ewok Hut or Bridges to attach to them, you could just make the tree to help populate and make it the biggest and best Endor Diorama ever.
So fans were given 2 sheets of posterboard. You could connect them vertically to make a TALL tree or horizontally to make a MEDIUM fatter tree or you could just use 1 to create a stump or skinny tree. The choice was up to you. this posterboard would be your support shell.
- DAY 1 - MAY 24 018 > In order to create the bark of the tree itself, a real clever idea came to me when designing the prototypes. Using simple brown post office wrapping paper, you would cut it at the height of your tree core with about 6 inches extra on each end in order to wrap, tuck it insode to hopd it in place. You would take your paper and roll it real TIGHT and crinkle the hell out of it 🙂 So many frustrations were eliminated during this technique hahahaha.
- DAY 1 - MAY 24 019 > Once your crinkled your paper super tight, you would unroll it and the paper would keep the memory of all the folds and almost like a miracle...
- DAY 1 - MAY 24 020 > ... The skin would now look like real tree bark. How cool is that 🙂 And we haven't even painted it yet. So at this stage the fans would just attach the paper to the core with some white glue and tape and tuck the ends inside to give the illusion of a true tree trunk.

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Did you attend our Celebration Diorama Booth ? If you came to build a piece of ENDOR , please don’t be shy and leave your experiences in the comments below. Even better, you can share them with other fans in the site’s GALLERY VISITORS DIORAMAS section. You can find out all the details on how to email me your photos on the VISITORS SUBMISSIONS INFO page … When I get your photos, I will create your very own page just like this one. You may not realize it but work does inspire others to join in the fun of making Action Figure Dioramas.
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If you have a facebook account, why not join the Official Diorama Builders Fan Club today, simply click the logo link below.
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Catch up with fellow visitors and exchange stories, read cool interviews with the crew, exchange photos, fun surprises and grab some FAN ONLY merchandise next year at actual future conventions ?
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ALL Decals, tutorials and artwork are ©FrankDiorio (dioramaworkshop.com) and offered FOR FREE to the fans – that would be you ? so you can build and display my diorama designs in your very own home. I realize I cannot control what one does with my graphics once I place them on the web, I can only ask you as one fan to another, please respect the artist and do not be that jerk who uses my designs and tutorials to build a copy of my work only to sell it on EBAY or trade/sale groups and forums. Thank You. Frank.
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