Hard at Work on SSM/HE Cavalry

The first dozen Spencer Smith (three are Holger Eriksson, in fact) are ready for basecoating! And lovely figures they are too after the mold lines have been trimmed away carefully. It does take a little while though, about 15-20 minutes per figure. And yes, I have stuck the modeling knife into a finger or two along the way. Ouch! Fortunately, the resulting injuries have not bee too awful. Oh, how we suffer for our craft!

I awoke to a light dusting of snow outside this morning. Funny how something so simple can make everything look and seem so magical all of the sudden. And the Advent Elves have visited too, leaving a gingerbread house kit for my wife, the Grand Duchess Sonja, by her place at the breakfast table. Can Christmas be far off I wonder?

Comments

guy said…

These look splendid figures. A blessed relief to do some cavalry after all those grenadiers. I look forward to seeing them painted.

I am nearing completion of my 2 regiments of Austrian Revel draggons - 32 figures in each and some staff officers. I am trying to find where I can buy some of those swallow tailed guidions from. I cut off the plastic flags and added metal poles and finials.The dragoons have an aggreeable contrasting uniform to add to the seried ranks of white.

As Alte Fritz said, happy Leuthen day.

Regards,
Guy

11:00 AM

MurdocK said…

Keep those elves busy!

Leave notes for your troop needs in all their favourite hiding places.

Cheers

11:16 AM

A J said…

Good luck with the painting. I'm placing an order for some Spencer Smith and Holger Eriksson figures tomorrow. I notice you have the cavalry officer with sword upraised. I'm getting this model too. It's a lovely figure, full of dash. ;)

3:11 PM

WSTKS-FM Worldwide said…

Thank you, men! Yes, Guy. . . a nice break from the serried ranks of plastic grenadiers. Never fear, Murdock. I left some pretty heavy hints weeks and weeks ago, so we'll what Santa Claus/Father Christmas leaves this year. A.J., a wonderful choice you've made there. Enjoy them when they arrive!

Best Regards,

Stokes

4:56 PM

Bluebear Jeff said…

Stokes,

I suspect that you will be enjoying the change-of-pace with these horsemen.

With luck the kind Grand Duchess may have passed some of those "hints" on to the man in red.

Be sure to let us know.

-- Jeff

2:03 AM

old-tidders said…

I'm sure they'll look nice when done, keep up the good work

Allan

6:49 AM

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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