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!"