Paper Fleet

[robject]

Hi folks,

I recently saw a flight of Minbari cruisers, put together from side images of the craft printed onto cardstock, by a very bright fellow who perhaps was tired of spending money on miniatures but still wanted a similar effect.

I wondered if perhaps some of our graphic artists in the Traveller world have a collection of top, bottom, and side images of the iconic Traveller fleet ships. Maybe we 'need' something like that in the public files here on COTI... or even for sale as a PDF. It would certainly be cool, and much much cheaper than buying miniatures.

Someone out there might already have meshes for these ships...

Along those lines, I was wondering if the Plankwell and Kokirrak were perhaps a little... boring looking. Blame my arthritic imagination, but one looks like a scaled-up Scout ship, and the other looks like three plain boxes stuck together. Some genius graphic artist might be able to take those basic designs and come up with somethings which look good.

So. Can I hear an 'amen'?

 

[coliver988]

On the Campaign Cartographer website (one of the links of an artist I think) had a 3D paper model of the Scout - I've got 2 of them floating on my desk someplace (my desk constitutes a Amber Zone at minimum!). So not only 2D but for several of the ships, 3D would also be do-able. There are some simply amazing 3D paper models out there!

 

[The Oz]

I wouldn't mind some paper minis of Traveller warships, even though I can tell you that the Plankwell, as sculpted by Charles Oines, is not boring at all, and makes a wonderful metal miniature, once painted.

 

[fredofmars]

The Saganami Island Tactical Simulator game comes with paper miniatures that you punch out and fold into a box shape. They look pretty good for paper miniatures. I'm sure something similar could be done for Traveller ships.

 

[robject]

I wouldn't mind some paper minis of Traveller warships, even though I can tell you that the Plankwell, as sculpted by Charles Oines, is not boring at all, and makes a wonderful metal miniature, once painted.

You're right; BITS has sample images up for their minis, and they look good indeed.

 

[aramis]

Renegade Legion (by FASA) used boxes-as-minis for the first printings. I loved them. Interceptor looked great that way. Wasn't quite so nice for Leviathon.

 

[AndrewR]

I've been collecting the Star Wars Pocketmodels lately (http://www.wizkidsgames.com/starwars/), because:
a) the models look really cool, and
b) I want to see how 3d shapes can be converted into constructable models, because I'm wondering what the production costs are, in case I want to take some of my own 3d model starship designs and make 3d models out of them.

 

[robject]

Renegade Legion (by FASA) used boxes-as-minis for the first printings. I loved them. Interceptor looked great that way. Wasn't quite so nice for Leviathon.

I played Leviathan, once. The game's owner kicked my fleet up one end of the field and down the other, of course. The game seemed to hold together well enough. Seemed a bit slow -- but if you know the rules maybe it's speedy enough.

I heard about the paper ships from Mongoose Publishing's forum. The paper ships from Babylon 5 were fan-created, and can be seen here:

http://www4.webng.com/chburger/Counters/Minbari.html
http://www4.webng.com/chburger/Counters/Narn.html

 

[Sturn]

Only 2D, but in my next campaign I'm going to use carboard counters created from scanning the counters in Brilliant Lances. I'm going to make them larger then standard wargame counter size, edit the graphics for player ships (put their own paint scheme on them, add a company logo to the side,etc), and mount them on some sort of 1/4" board.

Brilliant Lances has some nice top-down graphics with multiple "paint" schemes for all of the common Traveller crafts. I wonder if the original artist would allow me to scan and upload them? Or would FFE now own the rights?