Back from the Edge of the Earth. . .

Here is where things stand with those first five wagons and carts. Freshly glossed with two coats of shiny stuff and all done save for a wee bit of ground cover on the bases to approximate sandy tracks in the political, social, and cultural backwater that is the Grand Duchy of Stollen, somewhere in the vicinity of present-day Latvia.

In case anyone has wondered recently whether or not I've fallen from the edges of the earth, the answer is no. Just trying to do too much with the little remaining free time before things begin gearing up for the autumn semester in about six weeks. Sigh. I'm already thinking about what needs doing where syllabi revisions are concerned (shakes head sadly).

On a slightly more positive note, I am extremely close to wrapping things up with the first five wagons and carts plus teams and drivers/drovers as you will observe above. Only 11 to go, and then it's time to get to a rather large regiment of RSM95 infantry that's been in the lead pile for only about six years. No rest for the wicked you know.

-- Stokes

Comments

marinergrim said…

Looking good for those wagons.4

1:39 AM

Phil said…

Excellent work!

2:33 AM

Bloggerator said…

Coming along very nicely there, young man.

I will have to follow you down the same road for my own ECW project.

Cheers,

Greg

4:48 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

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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