Friday 14 March 2014

Revolutionary Flags - First flags now available

I've been working away towards creating high quality flags for the French opponents for my Austrian army, and the more I worked on them the more I thought they were good enough to be a sellable product. I created hi-resoution artwork so the flags would be usable not only at 15mm scale but also with larger 25/28mm figure, or maybe even 54mm if that was needed. Each flag at 15mm scale is around 13mm deep.

I started putting together little flag sheets with the three flags of each Demi-Brigade on each sheet and then decided that my new product would need branded. As these are Revolutionary flags the name was already there. "Revolutionary Flags". So far I have flags for the first 10 Demi-Brigades completed, with a few others for the regiments that fought at Marengo.

I then visited a few print outlets and was shocked by how much they felt they could charge for an A4 sheet of paper. Some places wanted a £3-£5 "handling" charge before they even printed the file. I started to think to myself "What's the point?". It looked like the flags would have to be expensive, which would mean nobody would want them. I feel that if you've already paid a lot of money for your lead figures, you wouldn't want to then pay out even more for their flags.

Then I visited one last printer, and there I got a different answer. "I can do that" and it was at a price I could afford. I gave the guy a briefing... "High quality print, on good paper than can take folding, using ink that won't crack or flake when its folded (as this happens with laser prints), and lastly, ink that shouldn't fade over time.

I collected the first sheets yesterday and they looked as good as I wanted. I have three regiments per A4, with four of each set. The shading didn't look too dark as I had worried, and although the detail is small at this scale it was clear and unpixelated.

Here's how they looked...

Obviously I had to try these out to make sure they worked. I trimmed the flags using a sharp new scalpel and the paper cut fine and the ink didn't crack. I then folded the first flag and again the print stood up to the folding.




So, I then glued and mounted a finished flag onto my first French Demi-Brigade command stand, and as far as I can see it looks perfect. Obviously you need to touch-up the flag to get rid of the white edges where the paper was cut, but otherwise it was easy to add the flags.

Currently available are the following sets:
Demi-Brigade 1 to 10Demi-Brigade 43
Demi-Brigade 44

Feel free to contact me on cdbaillie@blueyonder.co.uk if you wish to purchase some of these 15mm scale flags (each flag is about 13mm deep but I can supply at any other size where required). I am thinking that one set should retail at £1 plus p&p (which I shall confirm the cost of), or £5 for a set of each from Demi-Brigade 1 to 10.