Just Three More Buttons. . .

A reprise of the second-from-the-top photograph, but this time brightened and cropped to show just the three figures making up the company command vignette. Or it will be a vignette once some minor terrain features have been added post-glossing.

Well, I mistakenly THOUGHT that my Ansbach-Beyreuth company of 15 (Fife & Drum) jaegers was done. But -- and it seems there is always a 'but' in these matters -- there are three, or possibly four or five buttons down the front of the officer's waistcoat that need a dot of gold. And one or two more touch-ups that I spot now looking at the pictures.

But then I will stop this madness and call them done save for the usual acrylic gloss varnish and some Woodland Scenics materials on the bases.

In any case, here are a few photographs snapped this (Saturday) morning to illustrate where things stand at the moment. Some of my favorite castings, I think, among the many gems produced by Minden, F&D, and Crann Tara. There are a number of other brands of mid-18th century miniatures that I like, and many more than that on the market (we all have our favorites), but these three are far and away the very best in my view.

And it's amazing what a tripod with timer will do to improve one's picture taking results! I did not brighten the pictures in the online editor I use (Fotor), however, to give a truer idea of my color-wash combination of the Citadel, Army Painter, Vallejo, and craft paint products used to paint the figures shown.

In a nutshell, the breeches, coats, and flesh received appropriate washes after the basic colors with many, but not all, of the surfaces highlighted sparingly as the final step. As the song goes, it's getting better all the time. . . It couldn't get much worse!

Otherwise, the company should be ready for the Young Master to command in our game set for next weekend. The planned Battle of Spargelzeit. We'll be using our emerging set of morale rules from our totally derivative A Tangled Mass set, which has a had a few changes and additions since our last outing.

Stay tuned!

-- Stokes

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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