Putting the Cart before the Horse. . .

Well, you knew it would happen, didn't you? Yes! Although I have several other units in-progress, as well as within the painting queue, I am already thinking ahead to which uniforms I might paint onto that final 60-figure unit of Stollenian infantry sometime during 2011. My own travels and related interests make me partial to using the red-coated infantry from the Free Hanseatic Cities of Hamburg, Bremen, and Luebeck as models for the last unit of RSM95 Prussian musketeers, which has been in the pile of lead here at Stollen Central since early 2009, courtesy of a fellow long-distance voyager in Arizona, USA.

So, besides a brief referral one evening last week to my Funcken volumn on the subject, which shows two SYW-era grenadiers from Bremen and Luebeck respectively, I've been trawling the trusty ol' Internet (many thanks to former Tennessee senator and one-time vice-president Al Gore for inventing it) for additional illustrations of similar troops. Surprisingly, I turned up about half a dozen. All make for very interesting perusal and slooooow reading (my German is very rusty), but my favorite is the Knoetel print above, showing two very slight variations in the uniform of Luebeck infantry, worn during the 18th Century. An unmistakable North German cut to the uniform along with a pleasant contrast between the red coat and white facings, breeches, etc. make this an easy decision.

To put all of this into context then, the Stollenian capital of Krankenstadt, as a very minor member of the Hanseatic League (eclipsed in the history books on the subject by larger Riga to the north as well as Memel to the northwest), will furnish a similarly clothed regiment to the Army of Stollen, based on the above, making for a colorful addition to the army. And when I think of all the various Hanseatic-themed flags that might be used as the basis for their standard, well, it's almost too much to bear. But patience is a virtue I am told. Still, lots to daydream about in the coming months as I work through the final units of the initial project.

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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