Noodling around with Photoshop. . .

Stollen's Leib (Grand Duchess Sonja's Own) Grenadiers and the 3rd (Trakehner) Dragoons on their way to support General von Tschatschke's right flank during the August 2013 refight of David Barne's Battle of the Elbow River. The figures shown are from a number of different manufacturers.

Austrian, er, um, Zichenauer engineer officers in a heated debate about where under that nearby bridge might be the best place to place explosive charges. Minden figures.

Meanwhile, the local aristocracy enjoys a picnic with dancing and frolicking in a wooded glen a couple of miles away. Jackdaw figures.

Back on the battlefield, a unit of infantry, temporarily on loan to the Electorate of Zichenau from the Free and Hanseatic City of Luebeck and now part of General Phillipe de Latte's invading army, moves into place. RSM95 figures.

Stollenian officers interrogate a captured Zichenauer officer. "Tell us what we want to know, or for you it is. . . the Comfy Chair!" Minden figures with the addition of one each from Fife&Drum and Eureka.

Another shot from behind Stollenian lines with Revell plastics in the foreground, more RSM95 and Revell in the middle distance, and figures by Minden, Holger Eriksson, and RSM95 in the background. The gun atop the hill at right is from the MiniFigs SYW range.

From a nearby ridge, von Seydlitz and ol' Fred take notes and discuss the developing battle. "No, no, no! They're doing it all wrong. His cavalry should be concentrated on the flanks of the front line, and his guns should be massed on that low heights over there! Who on earth told these charlatans and poseurs that they had any tactical aptitude?"

Comments

PaintPig said…

Oh happy days indeed, a glorious shiny parade of characters

6:56 PM

Andy McMaster said…

Some good noodling there!

5:31 PM

marinergrim said…

I do like that Dresden porcelain quality you bring to your figures

3:02 AM

David Morfitt said…

A splendid collection - and good photography too.

I am envious of both! :-)

Cheers,

David.

1:44 PM

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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