"Creating napoleonic uniform plates" Topic

I have been collecting information on uniforms of light and line infantry regiments for the french army for the 1809 period. I was wondering if anyone could give me advice on how to create a basic template of fusilier, grenadier, voltigeurs, drummers, and sappers. I would like recreate Davout's 3rds Corps for the 1809 period just like Jc miniatures did for the battle of Quatre Bras in 1815. His plates are made for general de brigade rules which I use for 6mm miniatures. Here is an example of his work for 2eme Regiment de Legere using wonderful uniforms from mont-saint-jean.com

What program works best for creating such plates. I am aware the uniform is Bardin regulation uniform so I would need to find another reference for pre-Bardin. Any help would be great! This would be for my personal use as painting references to help with painting miniatures.

Btw I have information for the

Legere: 7e,10e,and 15e Leger, but only one reference for 13e volt.
Ligne: 3e,12e,17e,21e,25e,30e,33e,48e,57e,65e,72e,85e,105e,108e grenadier.

Montbruns' cavalry I have all the information on.

Missing information for 61e,111e so if anyone has any references please could you share them.

Thank you
Michael

I'm not sure I exactly follow what your asking – do you want to replicate the uniform illustrations, the base layouts or both?

Sorry about that! I want to copy the basic layout and find a program that helps design uniforms that the montsaintjean website used, but have the uniforms in the pre Bardin regulations.

Alexis Cabaret probably created the basic uniform plates using a vector based drawing program such as Adobe Illustrator. The layout of this full plate could be done in a layout package like Adobe InDesign. Both are part of the Adobe Creative Suite. There are other programs that will do the same jobs but those are mentioned are the UK industry standard choices for graphic designers.

What your actually asking to do is a big ask and will take a significant amount of your time just learning how to use the software. Why bother? That's masses of painting time lost.

Thank you Timmo! This is for my personal use and I would love to have as many French infantry regiments details as possible since I am creating each of the main French Corps for 1809 as a personal lifetime goal. Key word would be like "lifetime". You answered my question as I wanted to find out what program creates uniform plates.

The key thing here to keep in mind is the software didn't create the uniform plates but enabled them to be created. If you want to learn how to design and artwork such uniform illustrations the easiest way to get to what you want would be to draw yourself some master figures using the Cabaret plate as a template to work over as a starting point. You're still going to have to have the eye and skill to draw up your early uniform masters. Here I'd draw them by hand then scan them in and work over that image eventually combining with your digital template. So that you can fill in the shapes with colour every element is going to have to be drawn as a closed path. That is going to create complex files and you're going to need to learn one of the most complex parts of the software (pathfinder) to do that. Be prepared for many, many hours of computer time just learning. If you can't draw you're going to need good reference to work from to make up your masters. If you do decide to take it on good luck.

If you chose Adobe and get stuck while you're learning ask me, I should be able to help.

I've used a couple different programs to modify some of the montsaintjean site drawings or create my own flags.

Corel Draw is one and Arcsoft Photostudio is another.

As Timmo says, both require quite a bit of learning time to figure out how to manipulate and change your basic templates.

try to register at

the armchair general forums, there in the Napoleonics are a huge amount of uniform plates of different artists notably Boisselier where you might find the regiments

Thanks for the advice. I never thought of tracing the uniforms, but will probably take that route. I find it interesting that one of the most famous French Corps has a lot of it's regiments missing information about their uniforms.

Thanks everyone

I used Sketch Book Pro to do my uniform plates. They are more cartoon like than most but being self taught that's the best I can manage. link

roundie – I think your uniforms plates are quite nicely done.

Stephen

I think the orginal 100 days plates were made with a technique called pixel art. You basically generate certain elements and then you can copy them over and again. Changing colors is incredibly easy that way, but the outlines look somewhat pixelated.

I used to do pixel art up until 10 years ago when I was working in video games.

Roundie your website is great! I looked at a long time ago and always admired the layout of your blog. My goal was to have a layout just just like yours describing Davout 3rd in 1809 period. Really inspiring!

KaweWeissiZadeh,
I thought that was actually how they were made as well. I believed they were made by being copied over and over again. I have seen many websites showing made up uniforms by mixing and matching many of the 1815 uniforms to create an imagination army. For example link

Thanks for the help everyone!
Michael

So you are using 6mm figures? How do you get that kind of detail onto a 6mm figure? Is anyone going to notice? It just seems like a lot of trouble for a scale which one can hardly see the color of the coat let alone buttons.

link

Nasseur voltigeurs in Leval German Divison allow for detail and brighter color

Rallynow,

I completely understand what you mean i wish i painted 28mm miniatures better since they allow for greater detail. I actually switched to 6mm because I wasnt a good base, shade, highlight painter of 28mm. I find using adler miniatures allows me to pick out the details and in mass they give the impression of brighter color. Smaller details on the 12e Chasseurs a cheval trumpeter in 2nd squadron
link

Rallynow

So you are using 6mm figures? How do you get that kind of detail onto a 6mm figure? Is anyone going to notice? It just seems like a lot of trouble for a scale which one can hardly see the color of the coat let alone buttons.

Yeah that's right!

So here is the drapeau for the 111eme

Paul :)

Paul,

Awesome! Where did you find that? Anymore details on that regiment? Thank you

Roundie- that is a fantastic job, what else would you want.

[URL=http://s1364.photobucket.com/user/Boomerlc23/media/1e%20Chasseur%20a%20cheval%20Colonel_zpsnv4x0ylu.png.html]

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Hey everyone I spent some time on my vacation to make uniforms using paint to edit the great 100 days campaign uniforms by Alexis Cabaret. After working on the 1eme Chasseur a cheval I really got an appreciation for the major project Mr. Cabaret created. These are for personal use to help as references for my painting. I only edited the uniforms although I had to do some major modifications on the center company trumpeter.

Also here is 10e Leger[URL=http://s1364.photobucket.com/user/Boomerlc23/media/10e_zpswifx5hhu.png.html]

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Michael

[URL=http://s1364.photobucket.com/user/Boomerlc23/media/1e%20Chasseur%20a%20cheval%20Colonel_zpse9ak1o9m.png.html]

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oops sorry messed up the first one it seems

Very interesting topic. I'm trying to creat a set for my 1812 Russians. I found it is impossible to edit the plates from the Mont Saint-Jean website. Could you offer any tips for painting this kind of plate? Thank you!

My suggestion would be start with his Prussians, who are very similar to Russian outfits (OK Cavalry helmets might be a problem and, we are told, the Kiwer did not exist (there are actually some amongst the Prussians. Save as PNG but, when you want to edit select "Open with…." and chose Microsoft Paint or Paint 3D. Then maximise the image +++ and start painting with broad brush or "spray" in your chosen colours. Note how easy it is to darken or lighten the colour and be sure to do it in "bits" because and error is easily corrected by using the "go back" arrow

Thanks deadhead! Indeed it's convenient to transfer Prussians to Russians. I will have a try.

Matsukaze,

Below are the Austrians I created and one Russian soldier from 1805-1807 that I started to work on. As Deadhead said, I took a Prussian Jaeger from 1815 and converted him using other parts from the Cent-Jours Website. I use Paint and erase, cut, add color, and drag things to make the images. Feel free to save this image and use it to start adding a musket and stuff. The second picture has a lot of the stuff I already edited and erased to make it easier to transfer to new models by using the transparent function in Paint.

I will see if I can finish the Russian this weekend. I am a teacher now and have had little time to work on these due to my own research and the amount of time preparing to help my students in an inner-city school.

Michael.

Michael, Thank you very much! Your plates are very helpful!

Matsukaze,

Your best bet would be to start using this plate for the 1812 Russians.

link

Alternatively go to Max atbonap57 on Pinterest link
the infantry are well covered – the cavalry are I am afraid for earlier in the wars:

Michael, thanks again! I'll have a try today.
Prince of Essling，I've collected all the plates from Max. Early and mid-term plates are very detailed.

Alexis once posted, either here or perhaps on his site, that all his images are created and edited in….MS Paint.

I've ripped and edited a few for personal use, eg to make up uniform plates for British volunteer yeomanry, but I used GIMP. It is freeware, very powerful and thus takes a little bit of getting used to. But you can then do things like outline an area by hand and then darken or brighten everything inside it; remove a colour and replace it with another; alter the contrast; shrink, skew, and stretch images or sections; airbrush colours to create subtle shades; and so on. There are lots of how-to tutorials on YouTube.

To begin with, mostly I used it to add new ships, aircraft, maps and background pictures to an aircraft carrier PC wargame. Nowadays I also use it to design labels for minidiscs, to replace the yellowed decals in old plastic kits (scan, edit, improve, print out onto clear decal paper), and I'm currently fiddling with making shabraque decals for 1/76 cavalry, so I won't have to paint the vandyking or the corner cyphers.

It may be less effort in the end to get familiar with GIMP, and once you are, it has other uses.