"Creating Flags" Topic

I am painting up troops for a couple ImagiNations to play with Sam's new "Maurice" rules. I am wondering how people create their flags for their units. This is one thing that is slowing down my basing. I have some ideas on what I want on the flags but no idea on how to create them. Currently I am doing this in 15-18mm. Thanks for any ideas.

If you have a program like photoshop, try this:

Scan in an Austrian Flag. Select a color for the main field and replace the eagle with a solid color while leaving the intricate Black, Yellow, red and white triangle border. Next, find a picture of a lion, tiger or animal of your choice and superimpose upon the solid field. Put a white scroll under the animal and create a witty logo on the scroll.

Use different color field for different units and presto, you have you own unique flag!

Just one way you could go about it. Hope that helps.

Tom Dye

Oh…and do it in say 54mm then redue it when you print it out. Not only will it be easier to do, but you will get crisper images.

Tom

To be honest, I have been using the Vaubanner fantasy flags

link

Plus the good services of other TMPers who have lent/sent me flags

For all my flags I initially used images downloaded from the not by appointment site

nba-sywtemplates.blogspot.com

Then modified them using downloaded heraldry clipart etc and making the flag in ms paint. I then forwarded these designs onto David who for a small fee made them much nicer.

Then it's a simple matter of printing them out.

I concur with Enteburger: for a small fee David will kindly help you 'finalizing' your design (he's awesomely knowledgeable, full of ideas, and extremely friendly), then draw a beautiful definitive version.
Many of his works appear on the NPU forum (Pangaea), unfortunately 'down' at the time being. Other exemples on the Direkrorat of Herrschaden ( link and older posts).
Exemples of what he did for Monte-Cristo:

.

(of course you can deeply dislike this design -mine- but agree that the final rendition is beautifully done!).

Design of flags for imaginary (Catalan / Occitan) countries was recently debated on 'Emperor vs Elector':

link
link

Try Maverick Models – he will customize any flags and is very Imagi-Nations friendly. Great service, great product.

Thanks everyone. Alot to think about.

I am glad somebody posted here. I have a very slow build of a project going for an eastern European imagi-nation and have been having trouble with banners and flags.

-Eli

having city or personal heraldry would be common. using the tri-bar system, horizontal or verticle, would be common with colors representing virtues or populations parts that make-up the country.
One common factor would be a gold wreath or crown to represent the ruler.

If by 'tri-bar' you refer to types such as the French 'Trois Couleurs', maybe I'm insufficiently learned but for me it looks too 'modern' for the 18th C. and earlier. Even in France it was fixed only during Napoleonic times; while during the Revolution local improvisations, and even official regulations, led to a myriad of fanciful combinations of blue, white and red, always more complex and involved than merely 3 bars.
The navy 'jack' of the Netherlands, as I remember, had *numerous* orange, white and blue horizontal stripes.

Although flags with multiple bands of different colour go back into at least the mediaeval period, the vertical (and also the horizontal) tricolour seem to have become popular and widespread only after the French revolutionary tricolour was created in 1789 – and they often represent a conscious break from the old monarchical heraldry after revolutions swept away the old regimes. I'd say that very few flags of the earlier 18th century were of that form and that 18th century flags were of great variety in design and heraldry. That's not to say that tricolour flags can't or shouldn't be used by ImagiNations, of course, but they do give off a strong whiff of subversion of the old order – which may be intentional, depending on the ImagiNation… ;-)

Cheers,

David
nba-sywtemplates.blogspot.com

I'd suggest that if you like a 'tricolor' combination you could have a cross of the 'middle' color, 2 diametrically opposed cantons of the '1st' color, the other 2 of the 3rd color -possibly managing to have each of the 3 colors covering the same area.
A 'normal' cross (as on 18th C. French infantry flags) for 'vertical' bands on the original (many flags of the Garde Nationale were of this type before the abolition of the Monarchy)

A St Andrew cross if the 'bands' on the original are horizontal.

If you (or your country, for religious reasons) want to avoid the cross, the alternative Napoleonic pattern (triangles of colors 1 & 3 in the corners, lozenge of the 'middle' color in the center) can be the answer.

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Add some (± heraldic) device over the center of the flag for more 'color' -the coat-of-arms of the modern country source of your inspiration, for instance; on the last example it would cancel the fact that the 'central' color cannot be but 'over-represented'.

Alternatively or additionally the same device (grenade, lys, heraldic beast, crescent, crescent and star, Cathar cross, crown of laurels, crossed palm leaves…) can appear on the 4 cantons or triangles.

Note that the star with 5 'points' ['arms'? 'spikes'?] (sorry, English is not my native tongue) is definitively *modern*: in traditional heraldry stars had at least 8 'points'.

@ doug redshirt: please keep us informed!
(blog, blog, blog…: no easier and more reader-friendly support for sharing such a project.)

Btw, the concept of 'national flag' so self-evident for us was practically unknown before the American and French Revolutions.
Maritime countries had 'identification jacks' allowing to know if that ship was a potential prey, a threat or had to be ignored. But they were not used on land, and thus were not 'national colours' in the modern sense. The *partial* exception was the British 'Union Jack' providing the basis of the infantry 'King's Colours': exceptio probat regulam, in this peculiar case the motive was probably political: to 'hammer in' this idea of new 'Union'.

What was 'national' was a *pattern*, e.g. for the infantry the French white cross, Austrian eagle and image of Mary, Prussian 'iron cross', Spanish cross of Burgundy… Even if visual homogeneity was increased by the fact that the Colonel's flag / Leib fahn generally had a white field regardless of the unit's facing color, it was NOT a 'national' pattern since generally cavalry used another one (Louis XIV's Sun for most of the French mounted troops).

For a discussion of 'imagi-nary' coats-of-arms and flags in relation with the geographical location and thus likely history and cultural roots, two recent threads of comments on 'Emperor vs Elector' about the 'Catalan' Imagi-Nations of Poictesme link and Trypheme link.

Is there anyone willing to design a flag or two for those of us without the tools to do so?

-Eli

emu2020 what where you looking for in the design?

Eli,

Send me a PM with your e-mail address and I'll send you a few samples of what I've done in the past. Jean-Louis (Abdul) is familiar with my work.

I start in MS Paint with a huge catalog of heraldry and templates for most of the known "national" patterns, then I export to The Print Shop to get it sized exactly the way I want it, then export from there to a pdf file at 600 dpi and usually about twice the finished size. When you print the pdf file you scale it to 50% and it holds the detail and blacklining much better. The finished flags will be both sides plus the "sleeve". You can glue them together with a glue stick or diluted white glue (PVA or Elmer's), slip your staff in place and then use paint brush tapered handles to lightly curl the flag and add ripples and character to it. Once the glue dries and you varnish, it's all permanent.

Bill
Sir William the Aged
warsoflouisxiv.blogspot.com

Sir William as ruler and all things military visual designer of the Duchy of M'Uedail:
theduchyofmuedail.blogspot.com

Thanks PM sent

-Eli

For the (*historical*!) bewildering diversity of patterns initially used to display the 'newe french Trois Couleurs:
link
and more generally
link
(and a *lot* of uniforms, many badly known)