Thanks everyone! I really wanted to experiment with the lighting when I set up the palace this year.
I recently posted this info to my Customjedi Facebook page - now copied here...
In years past I installed lights in the book shelves in which I put my dioramas. I had experimented with rope lights and halogen puck lights.
The puck lights were alright but they were a little too bright and they burn hot.
Though you can get heat resistant gels and other accessories, those things are pretty costly. The halogen bulbs can also be costly and don't seem to last very long.
I've been in the process of changing my lighting over to LED.
There are lots of different LED options at a variety of price points. Since LEDs burn cool, you can gel them or apply gobos.
Before embarking on custom gobos, I experimented with masking an LED fixture with some kind of textured material.
I used this packing material with the honeycomb like cuts.
When placed over the LED fixture,
it creates the sort of dappled effect seen in the photos.
For some other areas of the palace, I used a cross-stich grid to create interesting shadows like so:
I'm still experimenting with other lighting options for different effects such as battery operated "rice" lights and small LED spot lights but nothing terribly complex.
Can we see close-ups of your mixologist astromechs? Other than R2-D2 of course, I was only aware of the white one with the off-center, vertical, burgundy stripe.
I figured Jabba would have multiple bar droids, but I've just thrown the serving harness on whatever astros I have lying around. I'm working on Jabba's actual serving droid now. He's still in progress though.
