Step 6.6 Toy Soldiering On. . .

The current 36 figures getting various silver details added., including a further nine men and horses, slated to join the regiment late in September.

Inspired by yesterday's lively online meeting of the Virtual Wargaming Club, I stole down here to Zum Stollenkeller for two sessions yesterday afternoon and again for about an hour in the evening. A nice brown highlight for the visible parts of musket stocks and picket stakes carried by the enlisted dragoon troopers followed by all but six of their swords in the evening.

Plans for today include applying silver to the final six swords before moving onto the stirrups and the sword hilts in and around the right hands of 27 figures. If that goes well, we'll see where the painting muse takes me next.

At the far left, you'll observe the pending horse grenadiers, colonel, and regimental trumpeter (an errant Frenchman pressed into Austrian service). These nine figures will have to wait until their brethren have been finished and glossed before I start on them, and very likely that will be sometime in the second half of September.

The addition of these nine figures will take the three-squadron regiment from a total of 36 men and horses to a nice, round total of 45 each. This unit seems to be taking on a life of its own, folks. Clearly I have delusions of grandeur. We can blame several photographs of Peter Gilder's Napoleonic lancers, hussars, cuirassiers, and ACW cavalry in those first dozen or so issues of Miniature Wargames way back when.

-- Stokes

Comments

Big Andy said…

What an impossibly tidy painting area you do keep! Mine seems to look like the first day on the Somme by comparison !

2:57 AM

Thomo the Lost said…

I am impressed both with the tidy hobby area and more importantly, the ability to keep focused on one project at a time. I would have the extra nine half painted by now and looking for a third set of figures to start on before even finishing the third set.

10:14 PM

Duke of Baylen said…

It's nice to watch the steady progress. I'm in awe of you doing so many all at the same time. I think 12 infantry figures is my maximum.
Stephen

11:49 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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