First Annual Golden Grenadier Award

Here it is! And pretty darn cool looking the certificate is too. Thank you to "Dwarfman" for his efforts to incorporate Oberfeldwebel Klatschen into the design. That makes it particularly special given the Oberfeldwebel's growing status and renown in the Grand Duchy of Stollen.

I'd like to mention that my follow painters in the contest also submitted impressively colored figures too, each one worthy of note in its own right. These little works of art included a couple of Prussian SYW cuirassiers, George Washington on horseback, a fantastic fantasy figure -- a mounted "Prince Imrahil", and a 40mm Dark Age Saxon figure on foot. And each figure was painted to standards as high and exacting as the Oberfeldwebel. Hats off to you men. I am continually impressed by how high the figure painting standards in the hobby have risen. Well done to everyone!

Comments

Snickering Corpses said…

A well deserved award, Stokes. He's one to be proud of.

The high painting standard in the hobby is a bit intimidating to me, I admit, as I work on my own figures. I think I'm just going to have to take it a little at a time, trial and error, and just do my best. You've certainly given me some inspiration with your own works though.

9:29 PM

Auston Jeff Butler said…

Congratulations & well done!

10:36 PM

Bluebear Jeff said…

Congratulations again. I'm proud to say that I was one of the folks that voted for him.

-- Jeff

6:11 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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