Groan -- Let's try again!

Well, for some reason yesterday, Blogger was presenting all kinds of problems each time I attempted to make a new posting. So, keep in mind that the following was intended to appear YESTERDAY -- Saturday, October 28, 2006. . .

Another, crisp breezy fall day – but the kind with sunshine, so it’s really pretty outside with orange and yellow leaves falling from the trees and formations of birds flying to the south. I wish we had a fireplace because there’s nothing like the sight, sound, and smell of a wood fire inside. Kind of makes me nostalgic for the days of my youth and adolescence when we lived with my grandparents in rural southeastern Pennsylvania. They had a 200 year old stone farmhouse with three fireplaces! Yep, nothing like a wood fire in a fireplace.

So, what’s on tap here at Grand Duchy of Stollen Central this weekend? Well, numerous little things. First, in about ten minutes, I’m going to paint the final bits of the Jaegers zu Fuss – silver musket barrels and brass trigger guards.

Then, I’ll set those to one side and go to work on the 25mm MiniFigs three mounted officers and two SYW cannon, which will become Stollen’s generals and an ADC plus a two-gun battery. There are a few mold lines and a bit of flash to trim from the three officers and their horses, but not much, so the job should be fairy quick and easy. A quick base coat might be a possibility too.

The cannon are a bit more complicated because they require some assembly and, of course, “super glue” to make that happen. Wheels, axels, barrels, and some smaller “fiddly bits” although I must say that I’ve never seen field piece models as nicely detailed! But then I've only ever worked with smaller 15mm sized figures and field pieces before this year.

Finally, while all of this other stuff is happening, my plastic Revell Austrian Horse artillery figures, who will man the two guns, will soak for 24 hours in a bowl of water and Dawn dishwashing liquid. Tomorrow, I’ll scrub 'em, take ’em out, dry ‘em off, and trim mold lines from the figures in question.

Then, if there is enough time, I‘ll fix the 13 figures to temporary 1” square bases with a dot of Elmer’s glue and slap a thick coat of Liquitex black over them. Oh, and I’ll drill holes and place a pin into the mounted officer and his horse -- to provide a firmer, longer lasting connection before gluing the two together with special cement for soft plastic figures.

Hmmm, there’s quite a bit to do! Looks like I’d better get started. "Nach Schmitten!!!" said the soldiers of Stollen to their generals. . .

And We're Off!!!

Arrrgh! Gotta go back into camera settings on my iPhone to bring all of the frame into focus. Blast! Painting is underway on the 60 or so Minden Austrians, which are slated to become my version of the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment of AWI renown. More or less indistinguishable from Austrians of the era really, right down to the red facings and turnbacks, but the eventual flags (already in my files) will set them apart. I went ahead and based-coated all of them over a couple of days lthe last week of August, using a mix of light gray and white acrylic gesso, before next applying my usual basic alkyd oil flesh tone to the faces and hands. In a day or two, I'll hit that with Army Painter Flesh Wash to tone things down a bit and bring some definition to the faces and hands. As usual, the plan is to focus on about 20 figures at a time, splitting the regiment roughly into thirds along with the color party and regimental staff. Depending on ...

Sunday Morning Coffee with AI. . .

A rmed with a second cup of fresh, strong coffee, I messed around a bit this morning with artlist.io using its image to image function in an attempt to convert my hand-drawn map from September 2006 to something that more resembles an old map from the mid-18th century. And just like my experiments with Ninja AI in June, the results are mixed. The above map is pretty good, but Artlist keeps fouling up the place names and has trouble putting a faint overlay of hexes across the entire area. Hexes, admittedly, are not likely to be found on any genuine maps from the era in question, but there we are. Frankly, I prefer the appearance of the Ninja map, but there were problems getting it to correct its errors. Grrrr. As is the case with so much having to do with the various AI's out there now, the output generated is a direct result of the prompts entered. For text alone, and when you develop a lengthy, highly detailed prompt, it is...

Continued Regional Map Revisions. . .

F ooled around a bit more with the revised map just before and after dinner this evening, using the Fotor app to reinsert missing text . I also removed a few other things using the 'Magic Eraser' function, which works surprisingly well. Now, we're getting somewhere. I just have to figure out how to ensure that the text is all a uniform font style and maybe figure out a way to add a few bunches of trees to suggest forested areas, Ninja AI is not always entirely cooperative to the tune of "I'm sorry Dave. I can't do that." -- Stokes

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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