Build My Droid Contest

The Build My Droid Contest, sometimes just referred to as Build My Droid, was a contest hosted as a part of Lucasfilm's Star Wars: Force For Change initiative in collaboration with FIRST, created with the express goal of inspiring innovators in STEM and the creative arts.

Starting in 2019, The Walt Disney Company and Lucasfilm partnered with FIRST, providing them over $2 million dollars in grant funding to boost accessibility to FIRST programs in underserved and underrepresented communities. This contribution was projected to increase access to FIRST programs by 15% internationally, reaching 658,000 youth worldwide, with the goal of inspiring the next generation of heroes, innovators, and storytellers, as well as bolster diversity within the STEM talent pipeline, leveraging Star Wars to excite and engage new audiences with the power of technological innovation and creativity. This contest was born from this partnership, with the added purpose of promoting the then upcoming film, Star Wars: Episode IX The Rise of Skywalker.

Entrance was opened to individuals 16 years or older, with sketches, drawings, or paintings being acceptable artistic mediums. The contest ran for less than a month, accepting entries from October 22 until November 13, 2019, and was available to citizens of only ten countries: The United States of America, Canada (excluding Quebec), Great Britain (England, Scotland, and Wales only), France, Spain, Belgium, Japan, and Mexico. The panel of 5 judges included special make-up effects specialist Neal Scanlan, then Lucasfilm vice president John Swartz, Lucasfilm Story Group member Pablo Hidalgo, celebrity Star Wars super fan and STEM advocate Mayim Bialik, and FIRST founder Dean Kamen, who was also the inventor of the Luke Skywalker-inspired "LUKE Arm" prosthetic device.

Over 3,000 submissions were entered into the contest, with digital promotions regarding the competition receiving a collective 2.8 million views as of December 12, 2019. Three winners were selected, one Grand Prize Winner and two Runner Up Winners, with the latter both receiving official 3D models of their droids, a poster signed by the main cast of Star Wars: Episode IX The Rise of Skywalker, and a personal letter of congratulations from Neal Scanlan. The Grand Prize Winner, Camille Manet, would instead be invited to the official Star Wars: Episode IX The Rise of Skywalker world premiere, where their artwork was showcased on the red carpet.

Their droid design would also be fully realized by Scanlan and department, promised to appear in a future project that had not yet been announced at that time. It would later be revealed that Manet's submission, KP-1, was featured in the fifth episode of the Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi television series, which was released on June 15, 2022.

Text and facts from the “Build My Droid Contest” article on Wookieepedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. Modified for this site.