Being a uniform and flag design service to wargamers and to the imaginary crowned heads of 17th and 18th Century Europe, especially of the Seven Years War period - now By Appointment to the Court of Saxe-Bearstein! (But please note that the uniforms and flags presented here are not fictional - they are genuine 17th and 18th Century uniforms and flags that are as authentic as I can make them from my sources.)
After many trials and tribulations, here is a Hanoverian Horse Grenadier. It is a slight cheat, as it is in fact the uniform worn from 1763 onwards by the combined Horse Grenadier unit created by the amalgamation of the old guards cavalry units, and is not the early Seven Years War uniform. I finally had to admit defeat on the zigzag pattern on the shabraque of the early uniform, which I simply could not get to look right after much struggle. It is amazing how tricky some of these patterns can be to get right.
There does seem to be some dispute about the uniform worn by the earlier Horse Grenadiers; the contemporary illustration in Niemeyer and Ortenburg depicts a uniform without lace around cuffs, lapels and buttonholes for the early uniform, whereas in Mollo's SYW uniforms book or in e.g. Preben Kannik's "Military Uniforms of the World in Colour" the early uniform is shown with the lace.
Hopefully Jeff of Saxe-Bearstein will now be happy!
And all future templates will, of course, start as 256 colours! Now that's out of the way, I can hopefully do some more creative work and finish the Hanoverian Horse Grenadier. With the newer versions of the images with their 256 colour palettes dropping them into a graphics program and colouring them in should be easier. I've found that one of the easiest and most intuitive programs is the free version of Graphics Gale http://www.humanbalance.net/gale/us/download.html where if you load one of my templates into it it clearly shows you the entire range of 256 colours available and, using the fill tool, you can easily select a colour and fill the required area. Quite a number of graphics programs I personally find *very* unintuitive to use, especially with my templates.
As I can't insert these in the right sequence, they'll have to be put here; they are not new but the Hanoverian cavalry templates with which I had such fun trying to post them some weeks ago.
With 6 votes [now 9 on Monday 23.07.07; 11 by Tuesday 24.07.07] in favour of converting the templates to 256 colours and not one against, it is a clear majority for the motion. :-) I've started converting them but it will take a while to get the job finished and post them all up on the blog. The next new templates to be posted, hopefully in the coming week, will be the Horse Grenadier for Saxe-Bearstein and perhaps the Highlander - haven't decided on that yet. ;-) I rather like the idea of doing the Saxons, a favourite of mine - British liking for the underdog, perhaps, as they had such a rough time at the hands of Old Fritz. Then perhaps some Russians will follow - and possibly a new, improved hussar but of which country first I'm not yet sure. Anyway, we'll see.
Update Tuesday 24.07.07 - I've uploaded 256 colour versions of the templates back to the Prussian cuirassier. I'll do the rest in batches as soon as I can.
Second Update Tuesday 24.07.07 - I've now uploaded 256 colour versions of all the templates back to the Austrian Dragoon (first posted 28.06.07). The final 256 colour templates will follow soon; now I'm for dinner and bed!
