Ares Games

Cowman's Paper Zeppelin Projects

These are pictures from two projects I completed in the past. The first being a small paper zeppelin mod I built for Wizkids' Crimson Skies in 2000, and the second being a much larger mod of the same paper model for use with Aerodrome 1.1, which I built and sold in 2006.
  1. In 2000 I decided that my WizKids' Crimson Skies collection needed a zeppelin and rules to match. I was a HUGE fan of the Crimosn Skies Clix Game and...
  2. The build at the scale the model came in was pretty easy and fit together nicely. I used standard cardstock, and sealed it with spray acrylic sealer....
  3. ...after base coating the model I used standard wall spackling to fill in seams and imperfections, and then sanded it all down to get the look I was...
  4. The Drive Pods, Gun Turrets, and Control Cabin were all made from baked Skulpy and glued on.  I was trying to get something that looked similar to...
  5. After multiple coats of paint, and top coat, the finished Zeppelin was quite durable... you card hardly tell it was a paper model. It is a proud part...
  6. In 2006 WizKids games had run their course and I had turned my attention to the 1/72 scale tabletop WWI game Aerodrome 1.1.  The group I played with...
  7. I took the R-100 plans down to the local Kinkos andhad them enlarged to poster size. I had calculated this to be about 1/200 scale (to the best of my...
  8. The sections went together nicely and I found it even easier to work with the larger scale. The tiny sharply angled cuts were much easier to make at...
  9. As I continued to construct and assemble segments I started noticing that the fit was not as precise as the Crimson Skies project... I started ot see...
  10. Slowly over a two or three day period the pieces started to come together...
  11. Just a couple more segments to build...
  12. All the segments are complete except for the tips... time to assemble the main body...
  13. ...and two rough halves emerge... again I was noticing that the fit was not good and the lines were a little off...
  14. A closer look.
  15. The two halves of the main section went together with some trouble... but things were at least starting to look like a Zeppelin...
  16. On to the construction of the tail fins...
  17. A final coat of aluminium paint... I was starting to look worthy of tabletop play... not a museum piece... but not bad...
  18. ... and more filling and sanding... I had done all of this work inside due to inclement weather, and by the time I reached this point in the project...
  19. After applying a metallic aluminium paint I started noting more imperfections...  time for more filling and sanding...
  20. ...one side at a time...
  21. After three days of adding filler, sanding, adding more filler, sanding again... multiple repeats of this process finally gave me something with much...
  22. A few coats of white primer...  it was here that the imperfection all become very obvious.  Time to go buy a large container of wall spackling and...
  23. Once the main section and tailfins were together I applied two or three coats of sealer to tighten things up and give myself a more rigid and less...
  24. Fins complete, time to add them to the assembly.
  25. In one of the games, even a couple of the "Cow" planes got into the fray...
  26. All in all I was happy with the project. It was a lot of hard work, but worth it in the end. After this event I ended up selling the Zeppelin to a...
  27. A couple of SE.5a's and a Camel go after the Zeppelin and it lone remaining escort...
  28. We ran the demo four times during the con... the Zeppelin was never able to complete its mission.  While this may have been a little unbalanced, the...
  29. The mission begins and the Zeppelin moves out...its mission to make it to the opposite side of the map before being destroyed by the enemy fighters...
  30. I ended up demoing the zeppelin and our homemade rules for it at Advance The Colors 2006, an HMGSGL Con held every year in Springfield, Ohio... It...
  31. The finished product. I think it took about three days for all the paint and dullcoat to truly set...
  32. Time for a few homemade decals and my silly engine pods...
  33. After lightly sanding the finshed paintjob to bring out some details, I ended up top coating four times with Krylon Dullcoat... this softened up the...
  34. ...and now to the part of the project I wish I could go back and change.  I had researched online for pictures of Zeppelins from the WWI era and had...
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