9 replies to this topic

[Tanotrooper]

Hello everyone,

over the past months I've been designing and gathering the parts for the first part of my project. Eventually, it'll be the depiction of certain parts from the battle of Waterloo (18th of June 1815).

The first step in this project over many years is creating the first battalion of the "45ème régiment d'infanterie de ligne". This regiment was one of the two regiments who lost its precious eagle at the battle of Waterloo. (a scene which I'm planning to recreate.)

Some of my WIP pictures have been posted on Brickshelf (which is sadly down at the moment), but the first two complete companies were presented this weekend at the Belug Brickmania weekend at Wilrijk, Belgium. Eventually the battlion will be three times the size of these troops.

The companies depicted are the grenadiers and the 4th company of fusiliers. Grenadiers were the strongest, tallest and bravest men of the battalion, and wore distinctive red epaulettes and plumes. The 4th company of fusliliers (=standard Napoleonic French infantryman) was the company that held the port-aigle. (carrier of the banner with eagle on top)

PICTURES:

a number of people have taken pictures during the weekend, so feel free to post them here as my photographing skills or equipment aren't the best quality  


flickr gallery

main view



Napoléon and officers



premier porte-aigle



tambour detail



view from the left...



and from the right...  



and myself  




my source for uniforms (coudln't have done it without this site and the help from the owner):
www.mont-saint-jean.com


I'll add updates to this thread as the battalion grows.

Comments and criticism are always welcome!  

Gaetano
TT

Edited by Tanotrooper, 30 November 2009 - 11:45 AM.

[Captain Blackmoor]

Although I prefer the normal LEGO minifigs, I have to say you have impressed me. I see some smart things in here, and the army is huge!
Napoleon's arm in his coat is nice as well.
I can see you've spend a lot of time and effort in this, and the work paid off!

Btw, does every man has a different Fleshie heads? In that case, you have a lot of heads!
That's something different then LEGO armies in which every man has the same standard face.

[Tanotrooper]

Thanks for commenting

I tried to have as many different head as possible, but it's inevitable to have a lot of the same heads with so many soldiers.

Still, no two figures are exact. I put on different legs (breeches or not, different colour, different coloured trousers), put on a greatcoat or put on a shako cover. In total, it took me several days spread over a large period to assemble these, and the variations added some hours to it.

forgot to add the link to the uniforms of the 45ème:
uniforms

click through to "1er bataillon" to see the uniforms of this battalion.  

Gaetano
TT

[SlyOwl]

Seriously epic stuff - well done

I love the non-minifig scale; kind of reminds me of tin soldiers, yet more poseable.

You must have spent a small fortune on that army!

[Tanotrooper]

SlyOwl, on Dec 1 2009, 12:11 AM, said:

Seriously epic stuff - well done

I love the non-minifig scale; kind of reminds me of tin soldiers, yet more poseable.

You must have spent a small fortune on that army!

Hello again (sorry for the late reply),

Thank you, one of my targets of these figures was to have an amount of detail somewhat comparable to miniature figures.
Indeed, it did cost quite a lot (I still have the order amounts on my Bricklink, but don't want to add them up in fear of seeing the total amount   ) , but thanks to a summer job I was able to do it though.  

I found some better pictures from users on Brickshelf,  credits go to Brickshelf users Aliencat, Gien7 and Patje.  





At the last moment, I changed the flag design. It used to have a yellow square lining inside the tricolour and a yellow eagle on top. Later on, I decided to add gold tiles to the border, leaving the tricolour clean. (This made the flag more stable aswell.) Then of course I wanted the eagle to be gold too, so I played around with the gold parts I had and made this design. Not perfect, but acceptable.  





The picture is sideways, but does give a feeling about the length of it all. (about 2.2 meters)



Reparing some of the casualties from transport and placing the last figures. I finished these just in time for the event  

(transport went quite well as I used these archiving boxes, in which I could put two baseplates secured with bricks on each side.)



The musket are a bit of trouble to be aligned after transport, but nothing to serious.  


These are picture heavy posts, and I apologize  
I'll update the thread with pictures as the rest of the troops are coming along, hoping it won't sink to the dark deeps of the Classic-Pirates forums  

Comments, thoughts, criticism are VERY appreciated  

Thanks for looking and/or reading  

Gaetano
Tanotrooper

[woody64]

Tanotrooper, on Nov 30 2009, 01:24 AM, said:

my source for uniforms (coudln't have done it without this site and the help from the owner):
www.mont-saint-jean.com

I also like the normal minifigs more for building regiments, but how you build the different details with a lot of different LEGO elements is great!!!!
When I first saw your single models I never thougth that you were able to build a complete regiment.

Also thanks a lot for the link, this wasn't known to me so far :-)

... and it inspired me to make the decals for a whole Prussian regiment (based on a Mosana ground design):
1er Bataillon du 6ème Régiment d'Infanterie de Ligne
http://www.mont-sain...hp?uniformes=34





Woody64

Edited by woody64, 13 December 2009 - 04:31 PM.

[Tanotrooper]

Those are some great decals woody64, the slung over coats look great   I'm looking forward to seeing those on minifigs with your custom accesoires.
The site is very useful indeed and also has a few uniforms of troops outside of the Hundred Days campaign.

Frankly, I didn't really know what to expect when ordering the parts. I calculated the size of it all, but only when they were being assembled did I really get the impression of the size.  

Thanks for the reply

Tanotrooper

[Fordo]

Quite the impressive army you've built up since posting your first Napoleonic minifig, I especially like that flag.  I'll definitely follow this tread and can't wait to see you depict the scenes of Waterloo.

[Skalldyr]

These are amazing, but the flag is epic.  

[hardcorowy]

The way that Napoleon holds his hand is awesome ;d, Great work