PART TWO: What will the size of your project be?

Once the problem of customized figures has been addressed, you will have the population you need to fill your Cantina.  It's time to start figuring out the dimensions of the project.

When I was researching my Cantina book, one thing quickly became apparent: that you just can't accurately map the Cantina.  I go into this in great detail, so I won't re-hash it here, but the short version is, the scene was put together from parts filmed at different times, on different continents, even.  Cinematically it fools you perfectly, but if you think too hard about it, you will get a headache.  For example, where is the band, exactly? "Well, that's easy," you say, "they are...they are in the...uh....well, they are right by the....um..." See what I mean? Concessions MUST be made. There's simply no way around it.  The best maps are educated guesswork.

So, going to Jason's Cantina Resource Page (by the way, you will need lots of resource photos to work from--this goes for figure customization too, and this page is excellent), I took his published map and cropped it down to a shape I could work with (removing text in Microsoft Paint, and doctoring it a bit):

Oddly enough, when I first saw the Scarrviper diorama, I discovered that he had followed pretty much the same concept.  I knew I wanted the bar to be central to the diorama, and that there would be booths to either side.  In a sense, the viewer is facing in the same direction as Luke when he first goes down the steps past the foyer.

...except for the fruity ceiling, that thankfully you don't see in the dark.

Next, I opened the cropped floorplan in Word, and made it a full-size page, turned landscape.  When printed, it gave me a diagram to plot out exactly how this was going to work, and who was going to go where.  You'll notice one majorly different direction I went in: I chose the back right booth for a stage.  Again, concessions.  I doubt that the band would have been there, and I'm not even saying they were.  By my thinking, we know that the back LEFT booth is where Han is, and where Greedo finds him. That much is evident from the film. I knew what I wanted to do with the other booths, and so by default, and process of elimination, I chose that corner for the band.  The real reason is, I just couldn't go through with this project and leave them out...they are essential to the scene, and they have to be in the diorama somewhere. So, why not.

I would advise printing a few of these floorplans, or at least using a pencil, because it takes quite a bit of shuffling around until you find a layout you are happy with.  I also marked locations of light fixtures on mine, and anything else I thought relevant.

So now, the time is at hand.  It's time to decide how big this behemoth will be.  Of course, one obvious consideration is the amount of room you have.  I almost blew this one big time, but luckily I was able to clear off a dresser to find a home for my Cantina.  In a way, the layout you choose will determine the size of your project, because you can only screw around with scale to a certain degree, if it's going to look right.

In our next installment, it's time to get building, and choose materials. I'm going to give you something I would have murdered innocents for at the time (not really):  exact measurements!

"Hey! Who turned the lights on? We are trying to drink in here!"

PART ONE: Where, then, to begin?

If you are embarking on a similar project, I would advise that you take the most orderly approach possible.  To me, before I even was able to think about how much of the Cantina I would want to build, or what the dimensions would be, I had to address a particular problem:

The problem of the missing patrons.

If you join (or even browse) the Rebelscum group called "Cantina Crazies," [I've included a link under RESOURCES] you'll see a nice list of all available characters that Hasbro has made, and the list even points out the best versions of each, if they have been remade.

Now, let's assume you have these.  All of these.  If so, then while you have a room full of figures, you still are left with several key missing characters, especially if you want an accurate line-up at the bar, like I did.

I figured, [oh, bad pun, I apologize!] if I could venture into the realm of Action Figure Customization, and address this problem, then I'd be ready for anything.  After all, the only other choice, besides buying customs somebody had made (and that won't be cheap), is to sit back and wait for Hasbro to make them.  And from everything I've read about the Tonnika Sisters and some sort of secret legal mumbo-jumbo, that's not gonna happen.

So, the first thing you have to do is decide which characters are essential to your project.  Think down-field, and get used to it, because this entire project is going to require psychic foresight you've never had.  For me, I knew I wanted the line-up at the bar to be correct, and to fill up the bar, so that meant needing two Tonnika Sisters, the "Flash Gordon midget" now known as Rycar Ryjerd, and the "Sorry about the mess scene guy" called Yerka Mig.  I also knew I had to have a second of the Duros to complete the pair that is enthusiastically chatting.  And to finish one booth, I needed the "other" Bith that isn't in the band.  And then I ran across the "Cantina Spacer," the guy that, in the film, wore the yellow flight suit eventually used for Bossk, and a space helmet.  This, it occurred to me, was the easiest place to start!

Again, in the RESOURCES, you can find links that will take you to many areas describing Action Figure Customizing.  I am not going to go into too much detail, but basically, here is what you do:

1) The first thing I would advise is to go through the action figures in your house.  Do you have children with a large Rubbermaid of extra Star Wars figures you've given them? If so, then you will have handfuls of headless, handless, and limbless figures that will be perfect fodder.  Search thrift stores and, if you have to, buy them on Ebay.  Many of the sites will tell you exactly what "ingredients" went into a certain custom (and so will I), so you will know what you need.  But go ahead and start your very own box of figure parts.  Put anything in there that you think will be useful, because down the road, it just might be.  You don't HAVE to limit yourself to Star Wars parts, but it helps.  I did, but in the end it's a question of what is available.

2) When you have all of the pieces you need, you remove limbs and heads by what is known as the "boil and pop" method.  I used a coffee mug of water, heated in the microwave for a minute or more.  By placing the figure in the near-boiling water, the plastic is softened, making it easy to pop off the limbs or heads, and, with quite a bit of wrestling, replace them on a different figure if you so choose.

3) Also, when the parts are hot and soft, they are very easy to cut or modify with a very sharp knife, if needed. Remember to stock up on Super-Glue.  If you can get your hands on the industrial kind, the kind with spray that sets it off even quicker, then you are better off.

4) Modifications can also be made with clay.  Again, the RESOURCES have much more to say about this, but I used Sculpey.  One version is much softer, and works for filling in areas easily (and can be painted over).  The harder, pink version is good for making larger items, such as heads or limbs, and is then baked in the oven, where it becomes nearly diamond-hard.  Then it can be painted.

5) Also, you will need some acrylic paint. This is inexpensive and plentiful in craft stores.  I am sure that more expensive paint can often yield better results, but I went with the cheapest stuff available.  A selection of brushes is essential, especially lots of small and pointed ones. Choose some figure stands you can spare, because you will need a solid base to hold the figure.

6) When your figure is assembled, complete, and painted, you'll need to spray it with some sort of topical coat.  From copious reading, I selected DULL-COTE, which is made by Testor's, and usually found near their model paints.  It comes in a small spray can about half as tall as a can of spray paint.  I found that it took several coats, but you have to cover your paint job in something to protect it, because it is prone to chipping or flaking off (again, cheap paint).

That is a short primer [another bad pun!] on customization.  Here are my finished products:

The Yellow Spaceman

A great place to start--why not start with an easy one? Ingredients needed:  Bossk (remember the POTF one can't sit down...remember what I said about thinking down-field?), Bo Shek (you are going to need the helmet anyway, so you may as well get the boots and forearms from him while you are at it).  That's really it!

The Bith that's not in the Band.

Ingredients:  An Obi-Wan Kenobi from Episode II that I got lucky to have already broken, and a Cantina Band figure (either edition will work, you just need the head and hands).  Paint the undershirt brown.  Any Jedi-type figure with the appropriate tunic will work, but again, think about if you want elbows (and legs) that bend.

Ingredients: The torso is from an Episode II Mace Windu, and I think the legs are from a different Jedi.  What's important here is that the outer tunic is darker than the pants (paint a wash over it if you need), and that the undershirt is dark green. You will, or course, need a second Duros for the head and hands.

Yerka Mig, and his sweet jacket.

There aren't many good shots of this guy; the above one is the most common one you will see. What's important here is the jacket, a yellow shirt, and some greased-back hair. Ingredients:  Ponda Baba (one of the carded ones that stands correctly), the head came from an Episode III clone trooper of some kind (I'll never know), but the face was so close I had to go with it.  I sculpted the hair using Super Sculpey and painted it.  The hands came from another human figure (a Ben Kenobi I believe). Paint the jacket as close as you can, and there you go. Notice we are moving up in difficulty as we go, here.

Bar shot - mostly to show the line-up

Crude practice shot--here we are noting the "Flash Gordon midget."

Back view.  Ingredients:  the body is an Anakin Skywalker Episode I figure.  I then removed a vest from a random Jar Jar Binks figure and modified it a bit.  It has a divet in the back that will have to be filled in with Sculpey to make the bottom edge of the vest look right. The head is an Obi-Wan Kenobi head (from the Cantina 3-pack), and while the face is as close as you can get, you'll still have to do some major modifications (I ended up taking the jowls down a little bit more).  I also did the hood out of Super Sculpey. It will also need quite a bit of paint to make it match the "little Han Solo" look.

Tonnika Sisters.

No idea why I didn't take a photo of the green one while I was going, but at any rate, there is an excellent step-by-step set of instructions at the FFURG.  Follow it.  Basically, the two sisters use various parts of two different "Ceremonial Leia" figures, with some heads swapped around.  The collar and wrist bands are masking tape (two pieces stuck against each other, making a thick textured piece of material).  The hair is done by finding exactly the right braided cord at the hobby shop and winding it around while gluing your fingers together about 42 times.  These two were the hardest figures I did, took the longest, and took the most coats of paint.

Welcome to the Cantina

I recently completed a project that had been a goal, in the back of my head, for years.  It took three months, many, many hours of hard work, and involved a lot of struggle, but I think I successfully completed it.  If you have the same or similar goal, you have come to the right place.

I've never been a diorama maker, aside from a couple of Lego projects, and I never was any good at building models when I was a kid, especially painting them.  However, when I was finishing my book on the Star Wars Cantina, THE CANTINA COMPENDIUM (which has undergone a major revision for the second edition), I began to research the various dioramas that people had made, and I was really stunned at what was out there.  One in particular inspired me quite a bit, and made me wonder how "doable" the project was.  

Then, I began to read up on the techniques, as I was wondering exactly how some of these magic tricks were accomplished.  There are several excellent websites out there to be found, and several of them are even Star Wars-specific, and I will include these in the links as Resources.  However, there wasn't anything that was completely dedicated to what I was trying to do!

Since 1995, when Kenner began to make Star Wars figures again, I have been stockpiling Cantina residents.  Now, it's the present day, where the now-Hasbro still occasionally releases a character we didn't have, or a remake that improves on the previous version.  As I had kept up with all of the insanity for 17 years, I thought the time was right.

Luckily, I took a lot of photos along the way, and my plan for this blog is to provide exactly the kind of resource I was looking for and couldn't exactly find.  Hopefully, I can share with you some of my trials and tribulations, and save you some heartache.  If my experiences don't answer a particular question, in the Links, I can point you in the direction of a site that can. I was going to make an extra chapter in the next version of my Cantina book, and I quickly realized that to document it properly, and go into detail fully, would comprise an entire book in itself.

So where do we begin? With the finished product, of course! I recently borrowed a fancy camera to try and take some detailed photos of my finished project...