Jiwoong Birthday 2020: The Language Of R2D2

“Boop boop beep boop beep. Bleep bleep boop bleep boop.”
R2D2
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“R2D2 – the most vulgar character of all time. They beeped out every single word he said.”
Unknown, Pinterest
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“My most memorable science fiction experience was Star Wars and seeing R2D2 and C3PO. I fell in love with those robots.”
Cynthia Breazeal
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“Boop boop beep boop beep, you R2 cool.”
Celeste Koh

#200106#

Since last year I made a half-Darth Vader half-Stormtrooper card for Jiwoong for his birthday (see JIWOONG BIRTHDAY 2019: DARTH VADER OR STORMTROOPER – WHICH STAR WARS CHARACTER ARE YOU?), this year I would like to continue this Star Wars theme by expanding to even more other Star Wars characters. Not to mention Jiwoong’s birthday this year came at such a perfect timing now because the latest instalment of the series, “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” is currently showing in theatres!

The latest Star Wars movie “The Rise of The Skywalker” is currently showing in theatres.

As a kid, I remembered watching a couple of Star Wars movies, however my impression of its storyline and characters wasn’t deep. Using Jiwoong’s birthday as a motivation, it’s probably a good time now for me to recap and get to know more about other Star Wars characters. Recently, I saw a vision of a familiar blue and white robot in my mind. I immediately recognised it as one of the prominent robots from Star Wars. Since it was a sign from the universe, so let me start to get to know more about this robot first!

This prominent robot character from Star Wars that I saw as a vision flashing across my mind.

A quick google search told me that this robot is named “R2D2”, a fictional droid character who has appeared in nine of the ten Star Wars films to date (Wikipedia). It seems like he is a really smart and cool multi-functional robot who always saves the day!

But R2D2 doesn’t speak human language, only words in bleep and whistle. Could you ever understand what he is saying? You may refer to this fan-made subtitles to understand the gist of what his bleeps and whistles mean in each scene. It seems like he curses a lot, doesn’t he? 😂

In my recent monthsary artwork #59 MONTHSARY: ICE KACANG GIRL, I originally planned to use coloured sands to make the effect of colourful syrups on a ice kacang but eventually found foam clays as a better alternative. But I already bought a set of sand art pack and didn’t want to let it go to waste without using it at all.

The sand art pack that I bought during my birthday trip to Penang last November.

Not sure if you also had memories as a kid playing with sand art like this like I did? Children sand art stalls used to be quite common in Singapore and Malaysia (not sure about other countries) where parents could bring their kids to play with sand and make a piece of art for themselves on the spot by peeling away the stickers of the picture and pouring coloured sand over the sticky surface. It’s like colouring a picture with sand. I thought it would be a good idea to relive my childhood memories and attempt this new method of sand art on Jiwoong’s birthday artwork of R2D2 instead!

So here’s a reference picture of R2D2 I found suitable to make sand art with.

First, I printed my reference picture of R2D2 on paper and traced it out on tracing paper.

This is a sticker paper I sourced from Daiso which is an important material to make my sand art work.

I traced out the figure of R2D2 from the tracing paper onto the back of the sticker paper.

Then I cut out some of the inner parts with a penknife.

In the process of cutting, I realised the original intricate small parts were too difficult to cut because of the slippery glossy material of the sticker paper. So I decided to improvise and change the patterns into larger, smoother parts that are easier to cut.