Converted Cuirassers Sieze Town Bridge

Here are a few of the much described and discussed cuirassier conversions (Revell SYW Austrian musketeer heads on Zvezda Napoleonic Saxon cuirassier bodies), taking control of the recently constructed town bridge. For the time being, these guys are in the rear of the painting cue. For one, I've only converted about 8-9 figures. That and I've got a regiment of dragoons to paint first, followed by the recently acquired RSM 95 figures, which will be painted to resemble the famed Erbprinz Regiment (light blue coats, red small clothes, breeches, facings, and turnbacks). However as you know already, my regiment has already been granted its own title: The 1st (Grand Duchess' Own) Loyal Grenadiers in honor of my lovely and amazing wife, the Grand Duchess Sonja.

Comments

Bluebear Jeff said…

These fellows look great going over the bridge.

-- Jeff

9:53 PM

Anonymous said…

I do like that bridge with it's gateways.

Very nice.

4:30 AM

Anonymous said…

Very nicely done. How difficult are conversions like that? What's your preferred material for ensuring your temporarily headless horsemen don't return to that state after attaching the new heads?

2:39 PM

WSTKS-FM Worldwide said…

Thanks for the positive feedback on the cuirassiers guys!

I pin the heads to the bodies with the long part of normal old office staples, trimming the two shorter end pieces with a small wire cutter. I use my pin vise and a tiny bit to drill holes into the heads and bodies, before checking the fit, making any necessary "ajustments", and gluing everything into place with a cement made for soft plastics.

I do the same type of "joint strengthening" between the rear ends of each figure and the horse on which they sit. Presto -- SYW curiassiers wearing breastplate only!

5:09 PM

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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