Two Companies of Minden Pioneers Finished!

The freshly glossed (two coats) Minden Pioneers and equipment. The photograph is a bit bright, but since much of my usual lighting is packed away now, I overcompensated in Photoshop, so everything would show up without difficulty.

Whew! Saturday has never felt so good. We have had a packing crew here for two long days this Thursday and Friday. The load-up and departure of our belongings is Monday, and we head for Michigan Tuesday midday after the cleaning ladies have finished giving everything the once-over. In the meantime, I have managed to finish the current and final painting project for a while. With any luck, I'll have time for some better lightbox photos tomorrow, and then I get to pack the last remaining bits into couple of book boxes filled with styrofoam peanuts.

While these latest figures are definitely not perfect, I'm calling 'em done. If you squint your eyes a bit, and remove your glasses if you wear them, they don't look half bad. In any case, they should do well for pioneering type duties for either the Grand Duchy of Stollen or the Electorate of Zichenau once we are again in a house with the space necessary for a semi-permanent wargaming table. I am making it a priority to stage a game based on a Charles S. Grant scenario of one kind or another when that (eventually) happens.

-- Stokes

A closer in shot of the 1st company, led by its stalwart NCO gesturing with his cane, along with the mounted officer. This group of figures is equipped with shovels, picks, and a lone hayfork in the back.

A less good shot of the 2nd company, consisting of men carrying gabions, boards, a ladder, axes, and a few adzes plus another wheelbarrow and a bucket of water.

Comments

Unknown said…

Hi Stokes,
A great job as usual. Great colour scheme as opposed to the more normal blue; I like it. They look very business like!
Best regards,
Simon

5:23 PM

Stryker said…

You've done a fantastic job there Stokes! I hope the move goes without too much stress and that all the little fellas arrive safely...

6:15 PM

MSFoy said…

Super - a fine body of men. Makes me wonder if they could turn their hand to building some raised beds for me, since my wife has another "project" coming up, to make sure I don't get to put my feet up.

2:02 AM

Conrad Kinch said…

Looking good Stokes. Best of luck with the move.

12:34 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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