I have spent a lot of hours lately on an attempt to remake all the classic Chaos Dwarf banner�?Ts from the old 4/5th edition army book: White Dwarf Present�?Ts: Chaos Dwarfs. The reason I have done this is, that the Big Hat range of Chaos Dwarf models from Games Workshop contains a lot of empty banner poles. Two empty poles on the back of every hero and lord, except the one pole on the Taurus Lord, and every single unit entry has empty banner poles as well. Modern figures come with sculpted metal or plastic banners, but back in the day�?Ts one had to make them in paper or simply cut them out from the army book. Now this presents a serious issue. Should I cut up my army book, or make freehand painted paper banner? I�?Tm personally bad at freehand, and I don�?Tt like cutting op old, rare army books. That left me with two suboptimal options: Should I copy banners from my army book, or print the scanned versions from the Wiki. Both options are fairly easy and quick, but the result is banners in an abysmal quality, since the new print would rely on already printed material, which ruins the sharpness, colors and visibility.
So what have you actually done?
I have spent quite a lot of hours (300ish) in Photoshop, where I have re-drawn and re-colored all the old banner�?Ts in 300 dpi resolution and a very high pixel count. I have kept a good overview in my layers, so that I can easily customize new banners based on the already finished frames, icons and motifs. Then I have resized all the banners into a single A4 sized paper, in which all the banners size should correspond with their original size from the army book once printed. Lastly I have uploaded a tiny, cropped internet version of each of the banners to the wiki, and made a link to the print quality version as well as this thread.
Does this look decent on the actual models?
I think they look pretty decent. I have linked some pictures from my army blog which has some of the banners on painted miniatures. Keep in mind that the banners can be folded slightly to represent wind, and not hang static on the poles. I just don�?Tt prefer that personally.
Here you can see all the remakes of the original banners, as well as a subgroup for all the recolored and customized banners (more on this later)
If you find a banner you would like, simply click on the link to the print quality version. This will download a .jpg image in A4 size, containing either all the classic iterations of the banners, or the recolored and customized versions of the banners, depending on which category you chose your banner from.
Print the image in the highest possible quality available. Consider doing it at your work or some place that has a good printer. I don�?Tt know much about paper thickness, but plain paper is too thin, and the semi cardboard I print my banners on is nearly too thick. Experiment a little if you can get away with it.
How do I attach my new banner to my model?
I do it the following way:
1: Cut the wanted banner free with a scissor. Remove the white around the edges with the scissor.
2: Grab a brush and an Abyssal Black/Chaos Black. Slowly paint edge black, without hitting the front of the banner. Let it dry.
3: Slowly fold the corners together. Once everything is aligned and you are sure it will fit, apply clue. Super glue is too strong, so use a mediocre clue like a glue used for tree or something (Trälim for my Scandinavian buddies).
4: This is the hardest part, getting the glue to hold the banner in space and together the way you want to can be tricky. Try to get it under mild pressure, so you don�?Tt have to pay constant attention during the glues hardening phase.
5: Once the glue is dry, you might need to apply a thin layer of paint to bend area of the banner, if the print has freckled.
6: If you aren�?Tt happy with end result. Try again. Rinse and repeat until you find a reliable way to do it yourself.
2016 EDIT: Way more banners has been made and I don’t think the service below is as needed anymore. Feel free to PM me but don’t expect much.
What are the Recolored/Customized Banners? These banners are the banners I have made, that aren�?Tt intended to be identical to the once in the army book. Their size often correspond to the original banner, but the colors or combinations in motifs, icons and frames might vary a lot, but should keep the same overall feel and iconography. The long term goal is to slowly expand this category with the banners I need for my own army, as well as the banners I make for other peoples armies. With all the ground work done already, it shouldn�?Tt require a whole lot on me to make recolors and tweaks to the banners, so they fit other peoples armies. If anyone want some banners, please let me know via PM. I do it completely for free, to give back to the community which has given me so much. If you want to send some slaves or spare models as a thank I won�?Tt deny you, but it�?Ts really not a requirement.
What is the limit of your helpfulness? Any banners, which require me to draw something completely from scratch, will require a lot of work from me. I will still get some new Icons, frames and full banners when I make some for myself, but I don�?Tt have enough time to scratch built banners for others. What I can do fast, is to take already existing banners and recolor them to fit your army theme, or take already existing banner elements (like frames, outer shapes and icons) and combine them to a new banner.
What do you intend to for yourself at a later stage? In the future, I�?Tll need some additional banners for my own army, that will be uploaded to the wiki as well. This includes some BSB sized creations, some additional banners for heroes and lords, and maybe some of the classic banners from the 5th edition OnG book (Goblins, Orcs and Black Orc banners for our slaves). When I�?Tm making banners for my own army, they might just be recolors as well, but from time to time ill draw something from scratch and try to get the right feel.
What do I need to do to get you to make me some banners? It�?Ts a somewhat hard tutorial, but it will make communication between us better, so that you get what you actually want, and I don�?Tt waste my time making something you won�?Tt use. I want to make two tutorials, so you can easily understand how you ask me to make you some banners, but they take a long time to make so I will see if there is an interest in me doing that before I make the hard tutorial.
2016 EDIT: This service never got going. Feel free to PM me but don’t expect much
Tutorial for a simple recoloring of an already completed banner: With 5 minutes work, this toturial teaches you how to make an image file, with all the informations I need to make the actual banner for you.
Step 1: Save the print quality version to your computer. Download it HERE
Step 2: Open PIXLR in your browser window, and press Open image from computer
Step3: Use the Crop Tool to mark the banner you want. Keep some white space to the left or right. Press the Enter key to get the marked area. You can zoom with the scroll wheel and move around holding down space and then leftclick-drag in the direction you want to go.
Step4: Click on Set main color in the bottom of the left vertical toolline. This allows you to easily get the color you want to draw.
Step5: Select the Brush Tool. You can change the size of the brush with a right click.
Step6: Draw the colors you will want me to use in small circles next to the banner.
Step7: Make some lines from the colored dot with a greyish line over to the point where you will want me to apply. Don�?Tt overdo it. You don�?Tt have to draw lines to more than one element. If I see a line to 1 spike in the frame, I do understand you want all of these spikes in the same color.
Step8: Save the image as a .png or .jpeg. Send an email to chaosdwarfbanners@gmail(dot)com with the image file and chose the title “Banner” so I can quickly sort away the spam. Afterthis is done, send a PM to me, so I know I have to check the bannermail.
Thanks A contribution like this is absolutely brilliant. And the wikipage look awesome. Make sure to link to the wiki in you post. I’ll never get to use these myself, but a big thank you is still in order.
I will send you 19 slaves - one for each classic banner.
Using paper banners My high elf playing friend uses nothing but homemade papr banners. Here’s a tip from him. When you fol the banners, glue a piece of aluminium foil in the center. This will strengthen the banners a lot and keep the shape if you decide to make a “wind” effect.
Important thread This thread deserves to be marked “important” by an admin or moderator.
Edit: I would love to see the GW Italy banner redone. The perfect BSB banner.
Wow thank you for that! Anyone who actually spends time to write a tutorial for the rest of us is a massive hero to me! That was extremely interesting, can’t wait to read the second part :D!
Wow thank you for that! Anyone who actually spends time to write a tutorial for the rest of us is a massive hero to me! That was extremely interesting, can't wait to read the second part :D!
Skink
The tutorial was like 2 hours of work. I spent 250ish an the banners on the wiki, but thanks man <3
Your compliments means a lot guys! Some of banners was fun to make, while other ones was super tedious. My soul nearly left my body while drawing all the skulls in the frame of the Taurus Lords banner (One of the banners I don’t even need myself). That was the last, most annoying, and most boring banner I felt I had to complete. Anyway, just wanted to thank you for the love <3
EDIT: @ Bloodbeard: I will consider doing the GW Italia BSB, but in comparison to the rest of the banners, it’s pretty bad. I’m quite sure I can (and will) make something much cooler from scratch on the BSB front.
1,5 years after finishing the initial banner project, I have finally done some more. I have made another hero/lord dual banner, and kept them rather small (like the Hobgoblin Arrow banner, as fx converted banner poles might leave less room for the actual bannersthan the classic GW banner poles. I have them rather classic, with black, red, gold and fire/lightning being the color scheme, rather than the bold blue that many of the classic banners has.
I have finally made my first set of BSB banners. This took a lot of time to decide on anything. I wanted this set to be classic, with skull icon, but I needed it to be “the most important banner on the battle field.” I decided to try making a bull skull icon, with lightning and fire, set on a classic design, as I thought the Dawi Zharr would think a bull skull is quite as intimidating as a regular skull.
The problem with doing Battle standards is, that I don’t have a size to match from the real world, as GW never released an actual BSB Bighat model. This means, that everyone has converted a unique one, and I have to expect different preferences in size and even whether the BSB should be horizontal from the banner pole, or vertical, from a cross beam. And even then, the vertical banner had to be added before the cross beam was glued to the banner pole. I made the vertical ones from the same ground work, tried to ad a chaos star behind the icon, which looked pretty bad, but I left you the option to use it.
I had to make one sided banners as well (as seen on the left above), with strips that can be bend around an already attached cross beam, and glued to the back of the banner. In this case I would spray the back of the paper black before I cut out my banner, but don’t spray too much. The best result will be the two sided banner, but some conversions won’t allow that. In these cases, you have to live with a black backside on the banner, or try your luck with a simple freehand, like a rune from Tamurkhan or the Rune of Hashut.
I hope this is useful for the few of you that use my banners. Feedback is (as always) welcome. It should be pretty easy to switch the Icon with other stuff, like fantasy footballs racial logo or the Chigaco Bulls logo (I owe you that one Herby) but I’m not sure about copyright infringement on things like these, so for now this will be the only BSB. If you need these in humongous sizes for an insane conversion, I can easily make that for you. These banners are really huges, and in good quality from my working file.
I have one last update for 2016 up my sleeves, and that is wrapping up project banners. Through the year I have put in quite a bit of hours on adding diversity to the banners available so that any player who uses the big hat models should have some banners that would suit their vision with their armies. Naked banner poles must be exterminated <3
See the WIKI for all the links to the print quality .jpg’s.
To properly finish the selection, I had to go through the 5th edition Orcs and Goblin army book to get some of their banners done as well. To drape our slave units in fancy flags I made the classic Orc Boys, Orc Arrer Boyz, Black Orcs, Common Goblins and even the duo flags for Morglum Necksnapper if anyone want to make him a unit filler. These banners had a lot of chessboard patterns along the borders, which mesh nicely with one of the traditional Hobgoblin banners. I decided to add a lot of chessborder banners with different symbols and colors so for examble a purple themed big hat army could adorn his slave units in multiple matching yet different banners.
This resulted in the Greenskins page
Looking through the Orcs and Goblin book reminded me, that many of the old army books had “paint them yourself” banners. I wanted to give that option as well, which resulted in the Black 'n White page.
I couldn’t navigate my layers well enough to find all the symbols without color merged layers, so if I return to this project it would be to add variety to this page.
Now, the amount of recolor/customized banners are enough to fill a page now. They aren’t all as good as they could be (I straight up hate some of them xD) but they are done and some might like the ones I don’t. This is all on the Recolor/Customized Banners page.
I have straight up stolen the Taurus logo from their Bloodbowl release. I did contact them, but they did not respond. It shouldn’t infringe any copyright however, as we do not sell anything through CDO. I am prepared to remove them if ff-fields or an admin asks me to, but the logo is cool and I would love to see it in someones Dawi Zharr force.
Since the recolor/customized banners where so aplenty, I collected all the Battle Standard Banners on one page. This page should yield you a BSB banner in a size that somewhat fits any reasonable conversions.
Lastly, the good old Classic Banners page remains unchanged. This is as close as I could get them to White Dwarfs Presents: Chaos Dwarfs
FINAL REMINDER: The print quality downloads is available through THE WIKI!
I hope you guys like it. I feel like I accomplished what I set out to do. I believe most big hat players can solve the problem with naked banner poles with this.
