10,000+ Visits to the Grand Duchy of Stollen and Counting!!!

Back in the saddle here at Stollen central! Just a quick note tonight to thank all of you for your recent comments on the RSM grenadiers -- some posted here and others sent as e-mail. I really appreacite your continued interest in and ongoing support of the Grand Duchy of Stollen project.

On a similar note, there have been 10,025 visits to the grand Duchy since last August -- as of this evening. Amazing and certainly nothing I expected when I began. Thank you one and all! Never thought I'd find so many friends and acquaintances with a simiar mindset out there in cyberspace. Isn't figure painting and wargaming a wonderful hobby? Now, if only there were 30 hours in a day and 8 days a week! Hmmm, I think I hear a song there! ;-)

Hopefully, I'll be able to get started on the 80+ figure regiment of Revell 1/72 Austrian grenadiers (remember them?) this weekend. And stay tuned in the coming weeks, to see what happens next in the onging adventures of Grand Duke Irwin-Amadeus II and his dentist, the sinister Herr Doktor von Ötker! Until later then gentlemen!

Comments

Snickering Corpses said…

Allow me to be the first to welcome you back!

8:49 PM

Bluebear Jeff said…

Yes, indeed, welcome back.

And I have something you should look at. Well, I don't have it, but I know that you'll be interested.

Please visit this blog and go to the June 7th post to see a large number of painted plastic soldiers:

http://lagerburgduchy.blogspot.com/

I'm sure that they will inspire you.

-- Jeff of Saxe-Bearstein

1:42 AM

Bluebear Jeff said…

Also, see how good Jonathan and my flags look on our comments . . . I, for one, would like to see the Grand Duchy's national flag used as an avatar (photograph) on your posts as well. Please consider using it.

To do so, go to "Edit Profile" on your DASHBOARD and enter the URL of such in the "Photograph" portion of the Profile (and remember to "save" this change).

-- Jeff

1:48 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

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