Col. Whipstick

Happy?

Perhaps reading the length of the post first might explain a thing or two... I made it clear I wasn't designing whole new figures, merely tailoring the current Armada designs to make them feel more Spanish and frankly I'm satisfied that I've done that. :-P As for the comment about Amish... I think that is pretty much just a tad on the slanderish side and more than a little unfair. I maintain the figure is applicable even if maybe the hat should be reduced to a cap and would happily have it in my sets and if you want further justification watch some movies like 'The Mission' with Robert De Niro Also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Bartolomedelascasas.jpg http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=h...%3D10%26hl%3Den

C'mon guys... we need a kind of vote or conclusion so we can officially verify our designs and hold TLC at musketpoint until they agree to make us our Dutch boys. Mr Phes can feel free to test his Toledo steel on them if they don't capitulate! So which torso/torsos do you lot want for the governor and then for the troops? Does the officer have a plume or not, exactly what epaulettes for what forces. If we can finalize the look for our generic Dutch I can get to work on some visuals for their specialised bases and/or ships etc. Ultimately I want to create unique designs for the big five imperial powers in a way that TLC would have made themselves if they had decided to be specific to nationalities.

Okay, without spending the rest of my life designing heaps of new minifigs and to emphasize a subtle change in the Armada forces here's what I did last night to try emphasize totally Spanish forces. I feel it would be hard to consider these guys Portuguese, Dutch, English etc. I apologise in advance for the one corner of the coat of arms not bearing the stripes of Aragon, problems saving an updated version. Ultimately I wish there were a few more pieces made by TLC, in particular headwear. I've been looking at the whole pirate setting in general and thought it would be nice if they had molded those short peaked hats that you tend to see puritans wear, this would be great for British marines and also for the governors and viceroys etc of the colonies, if someone can find the name for these let me know, usually there was a buckle around at the top and a short feature plum sticking out of a crest at the side. Anyway I designed what one would look like for the Spanish viceroy type figure. Additionally missionaries, particularly Catholic ones have never been developed and I feel it's a figure that would look really cool so I've designed a somewhat Jesuit looking figure, useful for depicting Spanish or Portuguese missionaries, some variation would be required for other nations. I also felt it a bit of travesty there's no shiny metalic helmets, black looks good but doesn't feel historically right for me. The other big thing that we are missing in this range is wigs! I wish TLC had made a piece that was a long white curly design to put on figures so we can bring aristocrats to the colonies.

Okay, this could take forever... I need feedback on our options... We need to chose 1/2 governors, 1/2 types of officers and the trooper is self explanatory though he could have orange or yellow epaulettes instead of the red.

I don't have those programs, MS Paint ma be hard work but it's what I've got. Unfortunately all I have is that photo and some vague refferences in Wilbur Smith novels to the Dutch soldiers at the Cape wearing green uniforms. I've looked on the net but as I've said before Dutch uniforms are hardly as proliferant as British and French. If anyone has ideas about the epaulettes drop the suggestion so I can make the design work.

Now that sounds like a plan, what about the use of yellow on the torso folds, or keep that all a solid dark green? What kind of hats for who in the ranks? Will have to work on some Dutch insignia though the Prince of Orange flag does nicely enough. Now I've been challenged to make Spanish and Portuguese destinctive, let alone the Dutchies, talk about a workload. Don't anyone dare bring up the subject of Germans and Belgians etc...

I can happily put Orange facial hair and it would illuminate the orange of the epaulettes and the feathers, only when it comes to MS paint the orange could look a bit naff on the yellow face but I'll give it a try sometime, generally I'm trying to do as little as possible to the original designs because I feel it's something of a sacriledge. The other aspect is usually there are two colours of epaulettes to depict rank... should Dutch imperial minifigs be like the blues or should we use orange epaulettes, which colour should be for officers and which for grunts?

Give me some time and I'll see if I can come up with some designs that obviously won't deviate too much from the Armada but give them an absolutely Spanish edge... as sharp as that piece of Toledo steel you're waving about. You've already poked Evil Willy's eye out! :-P

Nope... I have that face seperate, I didn't want to use that face for a more common soldier but thought the normal lego face looked a bit bland for the illustration. To make them look more Dutch I thought the brown bearded face of the Bomber Brigadeer would be more ideal. I would have used a Tricorn but I'm taking the hat from the photo. In terms of your wanting to see more red on the torso to make the blue imperials truly French just put red where I put yellow on the soldier torso and there's your viable Frenchy.

Of course they didn't have the blue stripes but as far as Lego are concerned they now do much to the annoyance of the Spanish enthusiasts :-P The fact of the matter is that as all of Europe and in particular Western Europe has countless centuries of complex heraldic symbols and flags owing to regional and national formulations, pacts, marriages etc there isn't a single coat of arms that isn't related to another and this only further steals the Spanish thunder. All it comes down to is obviously first and foremost we should consider the armada Spanish but that there's easily enough visual evidence about them to have them as other western europeans. And before people go on about the power of imagination unless you need a cat scan you won't be saying the islanders look similar to ninjas. We all know imagination goes a long way but with the armada it doesn't have to go too far to be something other than Spanish. ;-)

Here's my version of the boys in the photo, I'm still maintaining it's a dark green until my next eye examination. So simple Dutch troops should look something like this if we don't mess around with the original torso design much...

I'll see your Spanish Coat of Arms and raise you my Portuguese one... :-P That blue and white sail gives a lot of credance to the Portuguese, not to mention the red and green shirts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Flag_Po...830%29.svg#file Something a little more British.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:UK_Arms_1837.svg Again I'd argue it's our prefix of Spain as red and yellow that makes the armada coat of arms so highly spanish, interesting that yours picks up on the white instead of the yellow, like how yellow replaced white in their cross of burgundy. It's those green shirts and blue on the ship and sails that really put a dent in the Spanish assumption though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_portugal Read up on the history of the flag there, the green and red we all associate with Portugal is pretty recent, the last hundred years or so out of Portugal's respectable 1000 year independent history. The green has been associated strongly to the Republican movement whereas the prodominantly white background has it's usual bearings in vexilology to the church and catholicism. Likewise the Cross of Burgundy flag starts off with a predominantly white background and it's during the reign of Philip II that the Spanish bring in the yellow we recognise them for. Typically I tend to think of the Spanish as yellow and the Portuguese as green but our mindsets are determined a lot by modern visualizations. The Dutch could never be anything other than Orange though a few Catholic ones about might feel less enthusiastic about that. The French are blue, the English and later British are red. If I have to map the colonial territory of the main powers of the age that's pretty much how I associate them.

Where'd you come across the pic, can you remember the site?

Looked like a deep, dark green to me but then maybe you're right and they look green because that's what my mind was seeking. Those could easily be manufactured though...

Okay... fixed! Also fixed on my other thread concerning the Imperial Armada. Just got to my initial post at the start of both threads respectively to view the image. Thanks for the troubleshooting tips. *y*

I tried no end to post the photo here! I don't know why that link isn't public, perhaps brickshelf needs to verify it's contents first. The photo is about 47 k and I couldn't add it as a file attachment no matter what format I chose so how the hell you guys have been able to insert is beyond me so the only option I've had is to insert image via a url and when i tried inserting the image I get the error message of: Sorry, dynamic pages in the tags are not allowed. This happens all the time with any bitmap images I produce even when I change the format to gif etc. I've just gone to brickshelf and not logged in and I'm able to find the image perfectly so it's a mystery why the link isn't active. It works perfectly for me... try again or someone give me some instruction on how to upload images to the post successfully because there's obviously something I'm missing. http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=2809978

I wasn't debating what Lego's intentions were... That's kinda why I made the point of mentioning the generically Iberian look. I was simply opening up the suggestion that the overall look and design of the figures could in my opinion be used to depict English or Dutch forces during the Elizabethan era. It's never been in doubt that first and foremost they are Spanish but I like to stretch ideas, hence why I presented the argument... :-P

I posted this at the end of another thread because I thought it appropriate to the design of the green imperials but thought it worthwhile showing in a thread of it's own. Is it just me or is it really easy to find illustrations or British or French imperial forces yet we struggle with varying other nationalities. I know there's a million and one uniforms concerning the nations of Europe but given their relative obscurity they have little use for possible minifigs. I finally found a photo showing Dutch colonial troops in a theme dress situation and it's exactly what I was looking for as a generic design to turn minifigs into truly Dutch looking characters. This also gives me some bankable evidence for the green uniform theory. Anyway, I really like the look of these guys and they'd make some pretty cool minifigs. As for the photo... I can't even remember where I found it *wacko*

Now that's my idea of a parrot - quiet, clean and cheap to feed! :-P That treasure chest reminded me... A few months ago when I had access to my collection I thought it would be really cool to have a treasure chest built out of lego to store all the pirate lego in.

I really like the central length of the pier from the Sabre Island styled feature back towards and including the Lagoon Lock-up styled feature. Not mad on grey and black brick fortifications, atleast not in the same MOC as the yellow/white brick. But that central part looks great, it could be added to a coastline featuring sets like Broadside's Brig. :-$

Was up half the night doing these bitmap renderings of Imperial Armada minifigs using MS Paint... Will work on trying to do the entire lego pirate caste in good time. Anyway... Obviously the conquistador style of the Imperial Armada and the Hispanic looking facial features has always made us look at them quite simply as Spanish though Lego have simply been content to give the figures a generically Iberian identity. This being the case it's really not hard to identify them as either Spanish or Portuguese but I have some reason to challenge the Iberian status quo. Perhaps because we've always identified the Imperials as British and French we've never felt the need to consider the armada figures as northern european and clearly the armada figures belong to the early 'golden age' period of discovery and colonialism whereas the more Napoleanic design of the Imperials belongs to the more established colonial days. Even the rival association created by lego suggests this... Note how the main rival to the Imperials are the Pirates as by this stage piracy is well established and a rather freelance enterprise unlike the state endorsed privateer business it had been earlier. Now the main rival to the Armada figures seems to be the Islanders which emphasises that given their appearance Europeans are new on the scene. So effectively we have Armada figures from around the 15th/16th centuries whilst the Imperials are to be considered more in keeping with the 17th/18th centuries. Right, we all know the Spanish and the Portugese had a fair jump on Britain, France and Holland in the New World as much as the African and Pacific colonies but can we assume the Armada minifigs are just Portuguese and Spanish... Remember that the English and note I say English, not British were making explorations and forming colonies from the early 1600's. The 'John Smith' types wore clothing belonging to Elizabethan England and as such metal helmets and breastplates are not uncommon. I have a feeling the Dutch had a similar look for the time but don't recall French forces in this style though I could be wrong on both accounts. I just wanted to throw the floor open to debate on what folks really think of the Armada minifigs.

And with the name Aberdeen I was looking for the Scottish connection...