Nearing the Finish Line. . .

The latest three Jackdaw civilian figures (almost) completed. I'm especially pleased with the tray of fruit carried by the African servant. I should have been a confectioner and specialized in marzipans!

Almost finished with the three figures show above, but the gentlemen in green needs a bit more attention. . . and gold lace on his his cuffs plus a buckle on his white waist belt. The, it's on to the final base of four figures: two ladies, a bowing gentleman, and another tray-laden servant. The ladies are just about finished, so it's really just some detailing for the two males, which i might be able to accomplish in an evening or two, if life is kind that is, early in the week.

And then there are those two mounted ladies by Minden Miniatures. They are their steeds require some considerable detailing although the main colors are blocked in. I'm scrambling at this point to tie up several things, so that I can actually write the accompanying article, which I have promised for the end of May. And since I am teaching, as usual, a May Term film course, time is scarce for the next almost two months, and there is still much to do. The pressure is on!

Comments

Fitz-Badger said…

Looking good! I agree that your work on the fruit tray is very good. Do you find any difficulties in reaching parts of figures when you have multiples mounted on one base like that?

5:20 PM

tidders2 said…

coming along nicely

-- Allan

7:07 AM

Phil said…

Great looking figures!
Phil.

8:18 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

Search This Blog