"Help! Banners for 15mm Orcs" Topic

Nothing ruins a nicely painted unit like a crummy banner.

My banners are crummy.

Any tips you care to share?

(These would be paper banners for figures which come with poles and no cast-on banners.)

Some people use kleenex or cloth. I like the material from toothpaste tubes. For 28's and 54's it works out well. It may be a liitle thick for 15's, but you might want to give it a try. TIG

I use normal printer paper. Lots of curls and wrinkles in the paper before gluing on make a big difference IMHO.

aluminum foil

Lead foil is a good trick. Glue it on, crumple it a little bit and then paint it however you would like. Orc banners are pretty easy to paint so it should be pretty quick. I'd prime it black first of all.

Painting onto whichever of the above you choose shouldn't be a problem, given that they look like this in "real" life:

Cheers, TC.

Print designs onto label paper, cut and fold label paper around flagpole catching a layer of aluminium foil (cooking type) between the glue sides as you fold. Twist and crumple to shape then coat with wood glue.

The foil holds the folds in the flag while the glue sets hard. Without the foil the paper has a tendency to try and straighten out.

I like aluminum foil too. It's easily available ( I get mine from instant coffee tin seals) and can be easily shaped to depict fluttering pennants and banners.

I also, sometimes, use it as a base for commercially available flags (in this case LBMS) for a bit of extra strength.

Once you have your banner you can then paint it free hand,

or, another option is to get some commercially available shield transfers to go on your banner. This example available from Warlord Games.

You might also consider trawling through the sites of historical miniature manufacturers for some slighly different types of standards. Such as Roman/ Gallic animal standards or an interesting Draco from the Late Roman period.

Some ideas to consider anyway.

Thanks for all the ideas!

I went with Kleenex-type tissue paper that had an interesting texture. Colored it by applying one drop of purple ink – it gradually soaked through the entire banner. Blotted the banner with a paper towel, lifted it off with a toothpick to let it dry. Painted a pattern free-hand with white paint, and attached it with white glue. Decided not to worry much about folds and creases, as I'm conceiving it to be made of heavy material, and it's hung on a crossbar.

I was going to recommend laminating construction paper and tissue (toilet-tissue) paper or paper-towels.

First rough-up the edges of a construction paper cut-out in the shape of the standard (minus roughly 3/32nd of an inch around all of the edges save for those edges next to any attachment points) so that the construction paper has a raggedy edge that is thinner than the rest of the paper. Holes can be created in sort of the same manner by scraping or pounding on the construction paper so that the holes have a ragged edge and do not look "cut-out."

Then crumple it up a bit (this is part is mostly an art that has to be learned – I am still learning it) so that it looks like it is blowing in the wind, or from the force of the air as the standard bearer runs forward.

One way to help with this is to dampen the construction paper and drape it over the standard pole(s), crumple or shape it into the desired shape/position, and then use a blow-dryer to set the shape (with the force of the air – the fan speed – varying from high to low, and the temperature set on the hottest setting).

After this is done, then cut an oversized sheet of tissue paper that can be wrapped around both the front and back sides of the construction paper. Then coat the construction paper with a thinned mix of white-glue (Elmers glue, for instance) and water, and then carefully place the tissue-paper over the construction paper standard.

Wait for this to dry.

When that is dried, then poke out the tissue-paper in the same locations where there are holes in the construction paper (don't be "tidy" in doing this – make sure that the tissue paper remains looking raggedy and worn). When you have the holes in the tissue-paper looking right, brush on a coat of the thinned white-glue to set them in place (so they don't tear later when painting).

Then do the same thing(s) to the edges just past the edge of the construction paper. If you have worn the edges of the construction paper correctly, they should blend right into the two sections of tissue (front and back) so that the whole thing looks like one piece of cloth. When you have them looking right, again coat the edges with the thinned white-glue.

When everything has dried, then just paint as normal.

I haven't tried it yet, but one thing that was mentioned to me was to mix some paint with the thinned white-glue, and use it to paint the standard first (getting a rough pattern painted with the thinned glue-paint mixture). This will give the color a "translucent" effect that will allow the standard to have light show through it, and it will color that light (as you see in the above photos of the Orcs in what I am assuming is the Wellington NZ parade for premier of The Return of the King).

Then when that is "set" and dried, you just touch up with some highlights, or wash over it for some shading, or "stains" that might be in the standard.

This will give the standard the look of canvas or cloth when completed (I have recently been taught how to do this and the effect looks astonishing). I only have a practice standard or two finished.

I plan to use this technique for my Easterlings and Thunderbolt Mountain Goblins (I put a half-cross-bar on the Goblin Standard so that my Goblin general's standard would have a large cloth standard with either a Gundabad or a Carn Dûm banner on the standard). Maybe I will do one of each, but I would need to buy another command group.

For the Easterlings, I plan to use some Indian and Tibetan Standards as models, crossing them with some of the ideas that GW has for their standards, to create something that fits in better with Tolkien's conceptualizations of the Easterlings (not to mention putting the standards on taller poles).

Hope The Editor will post some pics of the finished effect?

Kleenex or Paper-towels give the best looking effect for just simple banners with little work.

Care needs to be taken when playing with them, as they can be torn easily unless they are reinforced (which is why the long post above).

They do look good though (very cloth-like).