Just Milling Around. . .

Here is the eventual mill (grain, or lumber take your pick) in progress.

All has not completely quiet during the last few days here in The Grand Duchy of Stollen. While The Young Master and I enjoy our final two weeks of summer vacation before school cranks back into action for the both of us (The Grand Duchess, bless her, is on a 12-month contract as a member of the university administration), I have been plugging away at a mill building to feature in my Sawmill Village refight in the near future.

The various roof angles and waterwheel have given me fits, and I've probably started and thrown the pieces cut for them away three or four times (poor measuring on my part), but things are shaping up at last. Still lots to do, but it should look pretty good once finished and painted. I'll give my mill a bit more half timber effect to make it look more at home in the mid-18th century though than the lovely, restored structure shown below.

Ok. Time to find my shoes, wallet, and keys. The Young Master has an appointment to keep this afternoon. Time for Pappa Taxi!

-- Stokes

And a more straight on side view.

And several shots of the actual Elstermuehle at Plessa in Brandenburg, Germany, on which mine is based.

Comments

Fitz-Badger said…

Looking good! Yeah, that looks a bit complicated, but your hard work seems to be paying off.

9:30 PM

marinergrim said…

A very nice piece that is shaping up well I'd say.

2:32 AM

warpaintjj said…

Hats off to you for even attempting that roof line!
It turned out very nicely thank goodness.
Keep us posted on progress, best wishes,
Jeremy

8:19 AM

tidders said…

Nice work on the mill - I expect the wheel was a bit tricky to make

9:50 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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