Sunday, December 12, 2021

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.  


1 comment:

  1. Ryan,

    I’ve just been reading your blog and really wish that I’d discovered it before. You have produced some wonderful ideas and your figures look great. I do hope that you’ll continue to write blog posts as and when you can. I’m now following you using Feedly, and look forward to seeing and reading your next blog post.

    All the best,

    Bob Cordery

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