The Spoils in Closer Detail. . .

The fully assembled Berliner Zinnfiguren Prussian mobile field forge with Fife & Drum limber horses and an RSM95 rider.

A few of you asked the other day for a peek at the items schlepped home from Berlin recently by the Grand Duchess, so here you are.

-- Stokes

Various Willie (Suren) 30mm ladies of ill repute, with The Naughty Lola at the center of things, and a 30mm Black Hussar Prussian military chaplain. I'd say he has his work cut out for him.

More 30mm Willie (Suren) sutleresses and vivandieres. I'll use these in two or three small vignettes, one of which will include a couple of soldiers' wives tending a large pot of laundry over a fire and hanging wet things on a line.

A 30mm Willie (Suren) plucky stable lad and running farm girl.

A 30mm Willie (Suren) bishop. This one has, as yet, no practical application, but he was too good to pass up since he bears such a marked resemblance to Monty Python's Terry Jones. "Oh no! It's. . . da Bishop!"

30mm Willie (Suren) dueling gentlemen, their seconds, and spectators. A neat little vignette all on its own. Eventually, I'll either add these to that bunch of Jacdaw frolicking aristocrats, painted in the spring of 2013, or make them dueling officers as part of a larger camp scene that I'm mulling over.

More 30mm Willie (Suren) figures, this time male servants and musicians, who will definitely become part of General Phillipe de Latte's retinue at some point in the not-too-distant future. A very special "Thank-you" to my friend Stefan Schulz for his extremely kind and generous donation of the figures shown here and in the preceding photograph. Much appreciated, Stefan. Vielen Dank!

Finally, one of several items I purchased last Friday from Fife & Drum/Minden, which arrived Tuesday this week. The 1/56th Fife & Drum French marshal on horseback, who is destined to become the "new" version of that most notorious cad and bounder. . . the French mercenary-adventurer and veteran of the Seven Years War. . . General Phillipe de Latte. I opted to have him holding a spyglass and with his head covered, but the figure comes with an extra head and right arm holding his hat in salute, so there is a bit of room to create just the figure you want. Just two small drops of Gorilla Super Glue, and voilà! De Latte's arm and head were firmly in place.

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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