1936 Romania AAR - A Case Study: King Carol II

Belgiumruler said:

How did you make that grapics?

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For the paper, just look on google, there are a lot of short tutorials on how to make paper look old. Just look for one that has a result you like and follow their steps, then experiment.

One trick i used for all the "printed ink" in photoshop:
- Create a layer with all the shapes you want to print (should only have pixels where you want ink)
- Create a new layer with a solid color fill of the color of ink you want (never go full black)
- now with the new layer selected, click and drag (no release) the first layer to the "add layer mask" button. This will add the first layer as a layer mask to the second which will now only show "ink" at your shapes. (any other way to add the layer mask is also fine).
- now add a filter to the layer mask: filter -> brush stroke -> spatter and adjust the settings until you like the result (i used values of spatter 1-3 and smoothness 2-8 depending on resolution of picture)
- If you want you can apply this layer mask, select pixels and add a new layer mask. Now you can use a brush to draw on this layer mask removing some more ink here and there to add some faded effects (be carefull not to spend too much time on this, prioritize in where you want to add more detail. I only did this last step with the stamps i made).
-set blend mode to darken

For the posters I used a full color drawing with lots of vibrant colours.
I started with some image adjustments (image -> adjustment):
- contrast/brightness -> increased contrast to max and a bit brighter
- black and white -> This step is really depended on the source image. I first looked for a color that i could turn a bit more to black without making the whole picture black. then tried the same with white. then tried to tweak the rest as much as possible to increase the detail. If it is a well drawn scenery image (using colours to create depth) then probably red is best used for dark areas and blue/cyaan for almost white parts. Then green and yellow go in between for nice detail. In general just look for extremes first (what can go really dark or really light).

Then to add the draw style effect i used a filter
filer -> sketch -> photocopy and then just play around with the 2 sliders.

Next step is using the printing technique used above, with or without the spatter, and definite use of the the last step of fading out the picture. Set blend mode to Darker Color (or something else for a different effect).

Now just put it on some paper made with a tutorial, add some text in ink and the picture then to finalize add some tips to creat wear and tear to the paper from the tutorial and you have a poster.

For the background: got picture from google of a "green leather desk pad" and looked for a wood tecture that matches the lightning a bit. decreased the vibrancy of the wood texture to match the tone of the leather pad. added a contrast/brightness layer on top of both and turned both setting down to draw attention away from them. In the HQ pic I added a picture of a folder to this base underneath the contrast/brigntess layer. Then on top of everything i have gradient white fill with an opacity set to 40%. the gradient is radial and before making it i adjusted the canvas size so the center matched the bright spots on the table and pad. Then after making it i rasterized the layer (so it doesnt size back) and cropped the image again. In between is the content with srop shadow enabled and the direction set to center of the gradient fill. There are a lot of steps you can add to the final picture but things quickly go from wokring on a final picture for 5 min, to working on it for hours trying to make it look real.

Apparently my attempt to give some quick tips suffered from the same problem ^^, hope this helps.

Also, dont take my word on any of this as being good photoshop practice, i havent used it all that much and i look at several tutorial for every picture i made so far, this is just a summary of some of those tutorials.

Carol II was born on the 15th of October, 1893 as first child of Ferdinand of house Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen , King of Romania, and his wife, Queen Marie. Heir to the kingdom of Romania, his birth was an important moment for Romanian. The joy of the event was welcomed, according to the tradition, with a hundred cannon volleys.

Prince Carol spent his early childhood at the Peleş Castle, under the supervision of his grandfather Carol I, who raised him in his own way. There, he was also educated in several language as well as mathematics, physics, philosophy and history. By the time he reached the age of twenty he had turned into a fine young adult but when his grandfather died that year he lost his way an this resulted into a series of romantic misadventures. One of these turned into a short lived marriage but this was never acknowledged by the family or the church.

During the WW-I Carol was often near the front while he accompanied his mother in service of the Romanian Red Cross and participated in military inspections. During these times he developed passion for airplanes and after the war he dedicated a lot of time to learn how to fly and in 1919 he ordered a specially outfitted Breguet Bre.14.^[1] In 1920 he decided to travel around the world and he did so for almost year, flying himself as much as possible.

During his travels he established many important relationships that would prove vital in the upcoming years. Besides valuable contacts Carol picked up a love for modern technology and got his hands on some of the latest models, from radios to electric brush cleaners and waffle makers. It was also during these travels that Carol met his Helen, the love of his life.

On 10 march 1921 Carol married to Princess Helen of Greece and Denmark and later that year their son Mihae I was born. They lived a happy life for a bit and both were loved by the people. But, rumors of Carol having affairs started to spread and this soon turned into a scandal that could not be ignored, whether it was true or not. This resulted in a divorce with Helen and Carol renounced his claim to the throne shortly after on 28 December 1925, making Mihae heir to the throne. Carol left the country and retreated to an unknown location where he would remain for several years.


[1] - The Bre.14C.1 was stripped of its guns and second seat and had an increased tank size. Allthough the Bre.14C.1 had about the same maximum speed, it's range was increased to 610 miles.

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Yeah I noticed it earlier but apparently didn't change it everywhere.
When I did I though maybe the sub-title should've been "Decent in Madness" ^^

Next update is almost ready, probably tonight.
Here is a small teaser of the artwork:

Some people claim Carol had never been very sane. Others, like his grandfather and Helen, claimed he had always been bright and full of imagination. There are several examples of eccentric behavior that can be found in Helen's diary:

“Carol was busy with his radio again. After he had realized that the radio he brought back from America was not capable of listening to the same broadcasts at home, he started visiting professor Hurmuzescu at the university of Iaşi who was experimenting with these sort of things. Now he says he has managed to put his radio in his plane so he can "fly towards the broadcast", while they work on Romania’s own radio broadcast."

During 1924 he made several of these radio-flights, flying towards Italy or Germany for a scheduled program. He would fly close enough to receive a signal and then circle around a bit while listing to the show on a set of headphones. Usually he had to fly back before the end of the broadcast.

Some reports can be found of his plane being spotted in the period between 1925 to 1928, but only one of these can be confirmed. Other then these vague reports and some letters send by Carol from different post-offices in Europe, there is not much information on his whereabouts back then. Although the locations of the post-offices vary a lot, it seems plausible Carol was staying in the area of north-east France. One thing is certain though, by the time Carol returned to Romania, the border between his imagination and reality had faded in his mind and both erratic fantasies and frantic memories had coalesced in a pandemonium, stumbling and trampling over one another towards insanity.


There are, however, a couple of retrieved pages from a diary, written in '26, and a photo, both belonging to one of the maids in Carol's place of refuge. It is very likely that the photo pictures the house and was taken from his plane by Carol himself.^[1] The pages from the diary show Carol's first definite signs of his deteriorating state of mind:


[1]- There is a series of photo's made by Carol in '24, after he received a remodeled version of the 1923 Le Furet, where he experimented with taking birds-eye pictures.

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Mkoll13

Wow, I am impressed quite thoroughly with your graphics and your premise. I am most definitely going to be following your work and look forward to seeing where you take glorious Romania.

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Thanks, nice to hear your onboard.

JustThatGuy

Our beloved king in a music school?

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That would have been an epic filler!
Thanks for keeping the posts coming.

Because of the positive feedback on the graphics i continued with the flavour images (had to read up on some more tutorials :happy: ), now im wondering if its working out alright or if its too much emphasis on the graphics or im just simply going overboard. Also, there is only so much time and attention span i can spend on an update so the text is bound to suffer because of the graphics so i'd love some feedback on this. But i guess as devout lurker i cant relly ask for much

I choose for the 'demand more' option

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I will start working.

I think the 'demand more' option is broken. It redirects me to a quick reply and not the update.

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Thats not a bug, it's a feature

Well it's working for me, some activity in the thread is a nice motivater.

Might take till later this week untill next update, got some other stuff and a also im reorganizing my project files as to not lose track of everything. Just know im working on it.

MondoPotato

This is excellent so far. The visuals fantastic and add nicely to the story. I can sympathize with the effort it takes in make them though! Either way I'm looking forward to the next update!

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Thanks, was actually planning on using some of your graphical ideas for this AAR

About the update, I liked the sort of banner images I had in last 2 updates so couldnt resist reworking them into a proper title+image banner and then had to go back to do all previous posts...
The real update will still be up this weekend, hopefully.

When Carol II left Romania his father, Ferdinand I, was still King of Romania. Since the unification of Transylvania, Bukovina and Bessarabia with the Old Kingdom of Romania at the end of WW-I, Romania had been steadily progressing under his rule. Land-reforms were returning land to the peoples and industry was growing, albeit somewhat concentrated. However, this new Greater Romania was also facing a lot of internal problems, many were caused by the differences between the old regions and the many minorities that had been unified under the Romanian Royal Standard.

Upon the death of Ferdinand I, in 1927, a regency was formed and Carol's son Mihae I became king and his brother, Nicolae, served as regent. He soon proved unfit to rule and the already fractured government got torn up by a struggle to gain control over the kingdom. The state of the country deteriorated and when the crisis hit in 1929, the kingdom plunged into chaos. With no unity among the people or in the government, faith in the latter was lost and when riots and strikes were met by violent repression, that void of trust filled itself with hate.


Fortunately, Carol II had planted some seeds in the minds of a couple bright students and professors, as well as some funds in their pocket. Between 1919 and 1925 Carol spend many days at universities looking for people capable of realising some of his ideas and dreams. It was probably during 1923 that Carol first met Elie Carafoli who was a student of electronics at the University of Politehnica of Bucharest at that time.^[1] Its from this moment that Elie starts to move away from the field of electronics and into aerodynamics and in 1926 he begins working at the Institut Aérotechnique in Saint-Cyr-l'École, France. It is unknown whether they met in France.

In 1924 Carol, together with professor Dragomir Hurmuzescu starts the Friends of Radio Association which aired several experimental broadcasts in the following year. In Carol's absence Dragomir continued working on the experiments and in 1927 he used the remainder of his funds to start the Radiotelephonic Broadcasting Company and in the following years managed to expand the company and by 1929 there were several regular broadcasting programs being aired.

One of the last official assignments Carol had before he left was the supervision over the construction and instalment of the Industria Aeronautică Română (IAR) near Brasov. The goal was to ensure supply for the FARR^[2] during these tumultuous times and possibly in time of war. He had already overseen a similar project in 1923 when Societatea pentru Exploatări Tehnice (SET) was constructed in Bucharest.

SET had not been very successful up till that point and the first prototypes of IAR did not meet the requirements of the FARR contracts either. In the 1927 1st air contest of the Little Entente and Poland one IAR licensed-build Blériot-SPAD S.61 managed to place 8th. In 1928 several agreements between Poland and Romania led to a more open attitude and both benefited from each-others lead engineers their ingenuity resulting in improved results on both sides of the border. This resulted in 2nd air contest of the Little Entente and Poland during that year was completely dominated by Polish and Romanian build planes. Some say this was a reflection of the development in the diplomatic relations between the four countries.

[1] - There are some early designs drawn by him, during 1923, that match some of the demands Carol had for the remodelling a radio into his Bre.14C.1.
[2] - Forţele Aeriene Regale ale României

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i demand more!

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Well here it is
It turned into a bit of a long update though...