Can't See the Forest for the Trees. . .

Here is an example of what I'm blathering on about below. I've included the 1/56th versions of von Moritz and von Ziethen for size comparison. Incidentally, some of the smaller Litko terrain bases might also be just the thing for command vignettes, which is, now that you mention it, another idea I've had banging 'round inside the ol' noggin lately.

During freer moments over the weekend, I plugged away at bases for 72 or so cake decoration trees, long in my possession and have featured occasionally in games over the years. I attached these to Litko terrain bases of various dimensions and then painted said bases in a Glidden latex (emulsion) color otherwise known as 'Deep Shaded Green.' The color seems only right for shaded forest, wood, copse, and thicket floors .

Due to a minor miscalculation on my part -- something that never, EVER happens in my universe I assure you. . . ahem -- I have yet to affix my two dozen or so Strelets (???) Russian evergreens to bases simply because I ran out of bases and must order more. Sigh. Still, you can see from the accompanying photograph what my thinking is with these various tree bases which are in the spirit of Charles Grant Sr., however with more random (much less straight) edges denoting wooded areas than was the case with his bases of two-three Merit trees as seen in The War Game and in the peripheries of various magazine photos way back when and once upon a time.

For some months this last winter, on a related note, I toyed seriously with the idea of adding grassy terrain cloths to cover my table and give it a more realistic look. Then I realized that doing so would require more realistic looking trees, buildings, and so forth. I must admit that I kind of like all of the stylized, scratch-built buildings I have amassed during the last ten years of so, and the cake decoration trees aren't that bad. In the end, I decided to remain with my stylized, old school look as an homage, of sorts, to departed wargaming greats like Charles Grant Sr., Young and Lawford, and, of course where the basing configuration of my units is concerned, Peter Gilder. It works for me.

Just a few larger bases of trees to assemble and paint this evening ater the Young Master's bedtime, and then it's onto a slew of Minden/Fife & Drum artillery limbers, horses, and riders for the rest of June and July. Tally ho!

-- Stokes

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

Search This Blog