The flats are marching in stop-motion

I did a replay of the scenario shown in this blog post, but this time tried to create a stop motion animation instead of just one single photo per turn. Here's the result:

The order of battle is the same as in the first playthrough of this scenario. The first and second line of the Prussians have been improved to a 3 bataillon first line with the grenadiers on the flanks, and a single Fusilier bataillon as second line.

The (non-written) orders were the same as in the first playthrough, so the general sequence of events was similar, too.

I did re-use most of the die roll results from the first game, in particular the devastating first volleys fired by the imperial infantry, to get a similar overall result as in the first battle. This was also helpful for the stop motion filming (see below).

So it is no surprise that you will recognize some main points from the first battle, like the wide sweeping flank movement of the Imperial cavalry, the defensive line on the hill, the devastatingly effective volley fire of the imperial infantry etc.

You will also notice some changes, e.g. the Prussion infantry wheeling to form line of battle even earlier, more frequent use of square formations to defend against the cavalry threat, and the Cuirassiers actually charging home, first riding down one square and then being shot to pieces by another one.

Note that I did indicate some musket fire from the squares by some cotton wool - although the game rules don't allocate a separate die roll to defensive fire from squares, they do implicitly include it in the melee results of cavalry against squares as you can see in the second attack of the Cuirassiers.

Regarding the stop motion technique, I really like the outcome.

I took 12 photos per Shako turn (i.e. 1.5 inch per step for cavalry, .5 inches for infantry in line). Even at low frame rates of 5 pictures per second, the motion is fluid enough to feel like a movie rather than a slide show. This works out to a bit more than two seconds per Shako game turn, which makes the minis move fast but not dash across the table too blindingly fast.

It is much better to play a scenario through without stop motion filming first, take photos after each turn and then more or less reproduce the battle in a second playthrough, using the first play through as story book. In the stop motion, you want all units to move simultaneously although the game has Igo-Hugo mechanics, and you want to fluidly include volley fire and melee results in the same X photos per turn that would be taken up by just plain movement in less eventful turns. You also want to complete formation changes before the end of the turn in some cases (even if they take up the whole turn as per the rules), i.e. before a unit that just formed square is hit by an attacker. In fact, I noticed that it is hard to spread out formation changes like left turns or forming square over 12 individual motions.

I still have to work on

• picture quality (better camera)
• less shakiness (keep the camera in place without interruptions, get a remote trigger to actually close the shutter to take photos without camera vibrations)
• right balance of
1. frames per second (I think the fluidity of motion at low frame rates of 5-6 pictures per second is better than I expected) and
2. the effective movement speed in inches per second of video (no matter how smoothly the minis move over the table due to the length of each individual step, if they zoom around too fast it's hard for the eye to follow the movements and catch all of the events on the table).
• better approach to zooming in on the action, and changing perspective. In general, I like the fly in effect created by moving he camera tripod a couple inches after every shot, but again it makes the picture very shaky. Maybe it's actually better to keep the camera perspective fixed completely, or to make hard cuts with a bigger repositioning of the camera at key junctures where some text might be introduced into the movie anyway to separate scenes.
• the smoke effect to indicate units firing - in principle, it works much better than I anticipated and is more necessary to show what's going on than I thought. I also like the animated effect of the smoke drifting away and eventually vanishing from the table. I just need to make the smoke move less - the current movie looks like it's taking place in weather conditions of extreme autumn storms...
• smooth movement (no stop-and-go, no erratic changes of facing and speed, no riding backwards) for the brigade commanders.