Strange little project

[steve_pickstock]

Some years ago I produced some animated Powerpoint presentations on the way to perform some drill manoeuvres. They went down well, but Powerpoint has improved quite a lot in recent years and it was suggested that these presentations could be improved.

I could have just used coloured blocks like I did originally, but I was looking through Eduard Wagner's European Weapons and Warfare, and I decided to see what I could do along those lines.
I haven't done any serious drawing for years and it just wasn't working. So I 'borrowed' an image from Wagner, and used that as a basis, but adapted the style.


After some black and white images, I drew with a pikeman, simple, coloured with pencil crayons.


After a lot of initial tracing and changing I came up with this sample sheet with different styles of figure but they're all pikemen and all at the Order posture. But I needed more than pikemen and you don't perform drill evolutions at the Order, you would use the Advance instead.


I was happy with the way that the figures scaled down (reduced in Powerpoint from 19cm in height down to about 2cm) and how the colours looked like those from Wagner, I just needed to improve the number and poses of the figures.

So, next I drew the pikeman, and an officer at the Advance posture.



With pikes drawn in, I decided to do some more officers. Pikemen (and muskets) you can get away with one image copied and pasted enough times to make up a body of soldiers, but you need officers to command each body, so I drew some single use figures.





With the officers sorted out I needed the shot element - musketeers - a couple of standard bearers, and drummers.




Lastly, I redrew the pikemen - one armoured and one unarmoured.


Finally (for the moment) I had a sample to work with.


So that's about a week's work - and I'm quite happy with the end result - it's something to work with.
Thanks for looking in.

[Beano Boy]

Very interesting Steve.

From the idea of drawing a few soldiers,
Mighty armies can be forged into steel. BB

[Bessiere]

I wish I were as brave as you drawing troops. These are fine illustrations and will do nicely for simple animations. Thanks for sharing.
Cheers,
Bessiere

[steve_pickstock]

I wish I were as brave as you drawing troops. These are fine illustrations and will do nicely for simple animations. Thanks for sharing.
Cheers,
Bessiere

I'm not really sure it's about bravery. I have always drawn, since I was a small child - I even worked as an art teacher for a couple of years. I just let it lapse.

Anyway - here are a few of my other efforts which are kind of relevant. They're all cartoons based on the ECW or 30YW, and are from about 30 (ish) years ago.








An alternate version










In 1643/44 the Royalist garrison at High Ercall House, in Shropshire were under siege; every morning a Roundhead drummer would climb up into a birch tree on a slope to the east of the house and beat out a challenge to the garrison. One morning a Royalist soldier shot him out of the tree.
It sounds like a tall story - except - the slope is still called 'The Birch Tree Bank' and the soldier was called Arthur Hurlstone. According to the parish records he was a local man born near the house and he was a game keeper and a marksman by profession.
There are also records of 'long gonnes', rifled fowling pieces, in the armoury of the house when it fell to the Parliament in 1646.

[C M Dodson]

Very nice indeed.

Best wishes,

Chris

[Minuteman]

Most entertaining, and clearly you have a talent! I also like your Eduard Wagner-style drawings; simplicity often works well and these are effective illustrations.

Back in the day I produced some watercolour 'uniform plates' for a friend who had various articles published in Wargames Illustrated. I have to say that in retrospect I am not particularly pleased with any of these (so I will not be posting them here!) but at the time it was fairly exciting to have illustrations in print.

[steve_pickstock]

Back in the day I produced some watercolour 'uniform plates' for a friend who had various articles published in Wargames Illustrated. I have to say that in retrospect I am not particularly pleased with any of these (so I will not be posting them here!) but at the time it was fairly exciting to have illustrations in print.

Ohhh! Go on! Publish and be d@mned.

[Santi Pérez]

I like very much your drawing style, Steve. Thank you for sharing with us all these beautiful illustrations, as well as your other unknown artistic facet that we must add to the one we already know in the field of modelling.

Santi.

[Peter]

Looking very good Steve!

[Susofrick]

Can only agree woth the others.

[MABO]

It's so interesting to see what talents lie dormant here with Benno. I like your drawings very much. You are really a very creative person. Currently I'm working - more or less just for fun - on a script for a movie that will probably never be made. But all of a sudden I had the desire to make a thought image into an existing one. Because it just fits so well, I show it to you here.
No competition, I would loose anyway!