Eighty years ago the Tivoli Theatre became a Movie House, and it spelled the end of live theatre in the city. Their motto is 'The Tivo will be the next revolution in entertainment...' Now they mostly show old action films aimed at gangers & wannabees, interspersed with cartoons aimed at the less clever types. But they're still in business... For some time I have toyed with the idea of making a cinema, and I finally sat down and made one. Not a Plasticville conversion I'm afraid, just slabs of Sintra. And slabs they are, this building is BIG. (Although it looks a lot bigger in photographs.) The building is 9 inches wide, 6 inches tall, and 10 inches deep. (22.5cm x 15 m x 25cm) It's the same width as a Plasticville commercial building (like The Oracles) just deeper & taller. I styled the building after a local vaudeville theatre that was converted to a movie house. Once beautiful, it got a facelift in the 70's that left it plain & boxy looking. So I built a box. (As a note, I assembled the building and primed it. Then I assembled the poster pieces and lobby and glued them in place. Then I added the paper signs, trash can, litter, and the lights on the sign.) To reduce the 'boxy' look, I gave it a recessed doorway, with a hint of the lobby inside. (A wall with two posters: That's all the interior there is.) The 'glass' doors do not open. (There is no interior light, the roof was removed for the picture above: The hydrant and no parking sign have not yet been attached) The tile floors are scrapbooking paper from a craft store. The trash can is made from armature mesh (as seen in Going Postal) with some additional clutter at the base. The awning is a rectangle of Sintra with an edging of styrene sheet. The decorative top edge was clipped in with a hole punch. AII posters and signs were created in Photoshop and printed on my home printer. There are two posters on the side walls of the recessed doorway:' Kill Zone' (with the artwork from the Grenadier box set) on the right, and 'Combat Zone: The Adventure Continues' on the left. The posters were downloaded from sites selling movie posters. They were glued to the back of a clear plastic sheet.The piece was then glued to the wall. The posters in the outside display were sandwiched between a sheet of white styrene and a sheet of clear styrene, and glued into the opening in the front wall. I chose movies with good visuals or ideas for Near-Future gaming. No zombies or vampires, I'm afraid. The 'Tivoli' sign is supposed to be the original theatre sign, with the 'Now Playing' sign added when the theatre converted to a cinema . Both were made from sintra and decorated with printed text. The lights on the 'Tivoli' sign are head pins from a stationary store. The balcony was intended to give it a vaguely 'early 1900s' look. It has a 20mm x 40mm floor, so will take two figures comfortably. (I use 20mm bases) The door is scribed on a piece of plastic glued to the back of the opening. There is an unconvincing decorative detail scribed around the door frame

Although readily visible to the gamers on high, the 'Now Playing' sign is not really very visible from the street. I also scribed detail into the sidewalk. I usually forget to do so (and have to add it later), but it adds a lot to the look of the model. . I put some sand & clutter on the sidewalk, and a piece of police tape. (I made reams of it, but have never found a good place to use it) I added a fire hydrant made from a section of dowel, a wooded disk base, a slice of plastic sprue, and several bits of wire. The 'No Parking' sign was glued to thin plastic sheet and glued to a pole made from a bamboo skewer. The bottom of the pole is wrapped with a flattened section of lead spear shaft and is glued to a plastic base. The base has rubberized magnet on the bottom which matches a similar patch attached to the sidewalk. This holds the sign securely in place but allows clumsy hands to knock it over without breaking it. I added some Political Slogans (from the Firesign Theater) to the upper walls. 'Shoes For Industry' and 'More Sugar.' (Making this the first tall structure I've built without a picture of the Olsen Twins on it) In the end, it almost got one: The front of the building was large and empty. In real life, it would be unimportant, because on an urban street few people could stand far enough back to see it. But as a gaming building we see it from across the table! I avoided the Olsens, and instead made another version of the ' Combat Zone: The Adventure Continues' poster and hung it on the front wall. . The rear doors are just scribed plastic glued into an opening cut in the rear wall. This view highlights the 'boxy' aspect of the piece. The roof is flat and essentially featureless except for a pish-pin 'lift handle'/chimney, and a 'Pete Garnham' style air conditioner. All in all it looks good (mainly from the front) and is an impressive terrain piece. It was easy to build, and probably cost me $4.00 iin materials. POLICE TAPE Print your text in a 4 point sans-serif font on white paper. Copy it onto a bright yellow paper at a copy shop. POLICE LINE - DO NOT CROSS - POLICE LINE - DO NOT CROSS - POLICE LINE - DO NOT CROSS - POLICE LINE - DO NOT CROSS - POLICE LINE - DO NOT CROSS - POLICE LINE - DO NOT CROSS - POLICE LINE - DO NOT CROSS - POLICE LINE - DO NOT CROSS - POLICE LINE - DO NOT CROSS - POLICE LINE - DO NOT CROSS - POLICE LINE - DO NOT CROSS - POLICE LINE - DO NOT CROSS - POLICE LINE - DO NOT CROSS Cut it into strips as you need it, using a steel ruler and a sharp blade. If you've never seen Johnny Mnemonic, do so. It's a great source for scenarios and visuals.