Faces and Hands Out of the Way!

Grüβe aus dem Stollenkeller! Here’s another photo update on that latest batch of figures – plastic Revell Prussians this time – in progress here in the best of cellars. Stayed up very late last night and applied Winsor & Newton Griffin alkyd fleshtone (oil-based but dries to the touch overnight) to the hands and faces of all 32 figures comprising “Freiherr Wilhelm’s Pioneers”. Their wigs and hair are finished too, though you can’t see that very well from this photo.

The way is clear now to begin painting the uniforms proper, mid-blue in this case with red facings and silver/white lace for the officers and men. I’m using GW Enchanted Blue and actually basing the uniform of my troops on that worn by Austria’s Pontonier-Corps, illustrated in plate D of The Austrian Army 1740-1780: Specialist Troops in the Osprey Men-at-Arms series. A very pretty uniform, so how could I hope to do better myself? Exactly.

Otherwise, there is much happening in the various corners of Apocryphal 18^th Century Europe as the summer campaigning season gets into full swing. If you haven’t done so already, visit the Emperor vs. Elector blog at http://emperor-elector.blogspot.com/ and take a closer look at related blogs like these:

· The Duchy of Alzheim

· The Duchy of Mieczyslaw

· The Grand Duchy of Hetzenberg

· The Kingdom of Hesse-Seewald

· The Landgraviate of Hesse-Fedora

· The Principality of Hesse-Engelburg

· The Principality of Saxe-Bearstein

· David von Tippelbruder’s new Prussian garrison infantry standards at his Uniform Templates blog

See also the following blogs, which aren’t necessarily connected with the Emperor vs. Elector guys:

· Henry Hyde’s Battlegames blog at http://battlegames.wordpress.com/

· Frivelous Fusiliers at: http://frivolousfusiliers.blogspot.com/

· Flanderkin Serjant at: http://flanderkin.blogspot.com/

· Grimsby Wargaming at: http://grimsbywargaming.blogspot.com/

· Tarleton’s Quarter at: http://www.gilesallison.blogspot.com/

· Steve’s Random Musings on Wargaming: http://steve-the-wargamer.blogspot.com/

· Phil’s War Cabinet at: http://www.warcabinet.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/

To say that there is a great deal of top-notch project design, painting, scenery construction, gaming, and photography going on out there in “blogland” at the moment is something of an understatement. Why, it’s almost more than a man can stand!

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

Martin said…

Hey Stokes,

That will be a snazzy looking unit by the time you're done with them. Refresh my memory, what do use for the stands to make the Revell figures blend with your other lines? Oh, and by the way, did you ever start on the quarter round fieldworks?

Yours,

Martin

6:25 PM

Fitz-Badger said…

You're certainly contributing your share! Nice work!

8:13 PM

Bluebear Jeff said…

Yes, bravo, sir!

-- Jeff

8:58 PM

Steve-the-Wargamer said…

...it goes without saying that I concur!

My congratulaitons on being in print as well!

6:16 AM