Quick Paint Tests

I am making slow progress on getting my mid/late 19th century armies to the table. I am still undecided about color schemes but wanted to see some options side by side.  Below are some examples of what I've already painted.  

I had some other football players, but none looked appropriate

I completely forgot that I had already painted a light and dark blue army.  After seeing it next to some other options, I think it fits well as a military uniform.  I really like the green uniforms, but I need to use most of my greens on foliage. The football player is from Techno Bowl, probably the best game I've ever played.  It's a great mix of luck, strategy, and customization.  The only downside is that it is impossible to play solo well.

One of the blessings in disguise of 3D printing is that the process isn’t perfect. Sometimes models fail for unexpected and unexplained reasons. If the errors aren’t too catastrophic, this leaves you with a small number of otherwise useless models. These make great test subjects for painting. I gave two failed prints a quick mockup.  Cieland's light and dark blue was up first.   The first step was ensuring I don't want white pants/helmets.  The white pants and helmet looks very tropical.  My terrain is more arid than tropical.  

After adding dark blue paint to the helmet and pants, the uniform looks decidedly less tropical.  Completing the model with flesh tone faces, brown and silver firearms, gold spikes on the pickelhaube, and regimental cuffs, will yield a viable Cielandic uniform.  

Sicora's red uniform is up next.  It is intended to be roughly inspired by Victorian Great Britain.  I'm not striving for complete imitation, it just needs to look British enough that it could be used in a historically inspired scenario.  As with the other uniform, I started by painting the Tunic and then adding color and evaluating the combinations along the way.

The all white uniform could be OK but it looks rather Napoleonic to me.  By the mid/late 19th Century most European nations had moved away from white pants.  I can't imagine trying to keep a white uniform looking good in the field.

I didn't have any khaki paint available so I had to move straight to Home Service Uniforms.  I know the late 19th Century Home Service Uniform had a spike on the helmet, but with my impressionistic (low detail) modeling the only uniform difference would be the height of the helmet. I like this scheme better.  It really helps develop the toy soldier look I want and keeps me from developing theater specific uniforms.  

The photo above shows the sample models at roughly 3 feet.  They look distinct enough for me.  I don't really like how "symmetric" the uniforms are, but I don't know how to fix it.  I opted out of light color pants for both.  I could probably reverse Cieland's tunic and pants color, but if I expand the line in the future, France and/or US would be next.  Reversing Cieland's scheme would very closely mimic US uniforms.  

Cieland Uniform Plates

 Similarly to Sicora, the Cieland uniform design is committed, but the color scheme is not.  All units in the Cielandic Army wear short tunics and pickelhaube helmets. To be most historically accurate, the tunic should be dark blue and the trousers should be dark gray.   If my modeling skills are sufficient, they should invoke a Prussian impression.  I do like the Prussian color scheme and it would contrast well with the bright red Sicoran uniforms, but the bright blue uniforms from my 18th Century army (featured in late 2018) still capture my imagination.  Striking a balance between being able to use the force in historically inspired and purely imagi-nation settings is proving difficult.  

Bright blue would have been a historically difficult proposition.  Bright blue dyes were very expensive compared to red, yellow, or natural shades.  Outfitting an entire army in bright blue would have been very expensive, leading most countries to use a cheaper dark blue dye or avoid it entirely. I am leaning towards going full imagi-nation. In an imagi-nation setting, it is very easy to rationalize a cheaper light blue dye or a reason for the nation to be wealthy enough to afford enough expensive dye to uniform the army.  

Prussian Infantry for Reference

  

Regular Pattern

Possible Guard Uniform

Tropical Pattern