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Description
The next vessel isn’t a regular ship - she’s an airship! Meet R101, one of two grand vessels built for the British Imperial Airship Scheme. She met a terrible end in a storm while on her first overseas flight, and her crash effectively killed the British dream of having a fleet of airships to provide transport around the then-vast empire. Now, she’s taking flight again, just in a different form!

Here are the notes:
-I went with a subtle storm/rain theme for her, as she crashed during a storm. You can see this most obviously in her umbrella, but there are other elements of that as well: her hairstyle is meant to look a bit cloudy and her cool, bluish color scheme evokes rain and thunderclouds. I originally considered giving her a storm-themed raincoat as well, but it didn’t feel right so I scrapped the idea.
-Her umbrella has a ring of little “windows” in it; these are based on a set of vents which were meant to equalize the pressure inside her cover. You can see these in real pictures of her, too: they’re those little circular holes arranged in a ring around her nose.
-The shape of her dress is meant to resemble her original airship form! R101 used the “Lyon Shape,” an elongated teardrop shape invented by Hilda Lyon for use on airships and submarines; I modeled her dress off that, and the parts that flare out at the bottom represent the airship’s fins (you can see the 1930s dress design that helped inspire this idea here ). Aside from those “fin” parts, her dress is actually too tight to walk properly in, but that’s okay because she just floats everywhere anyway.
-I originally planned to give her much darker and more purplish hair, with the colors sampled from pictures of thunderclouds. I changed it to a lighter blue-gray instead so it would look better next to her light, blue-toned clothes.
-Her clothes are super shiny, probably more so than she was in real life. A high-gloss finish just felt like the right thing to do, so I did it. I’m super proud of those highlights!
-I considered giving her a scarf or a necklace, but ultimately I decided against it as I wanted a very sleek, simplistic look for her (that’s also one of the reasons why I scrapped the raincoat idea).
-The title for this one comes from Empire of the Clouds by Iron Maiden! That song is the reason I learned about R101 in the first place, so it deserves a shoutout here.

For R101’s profile, go here .

For more information on the airship herself, check out the following:
R101’s airworthiness certificate
R.101 - Registration G-FAAW
Britain’s Million-Pound Monster Comes to London

Description
The next vessel isn’t a regular ship - she’s an airship! Meet R101, one of two grand vessels built for the British Imperial Airship Scheme. She met a terrible end in a storm while on her first overseas flight, and her crash effectively killed the British dream of having a fleet of airships to provide transport around the then-vast empire. Now, she’s taking flight again, just in a different form!

Here are the notes:
-I went with a subtle storm/rain theme for her, as she crashed during a storm. You can see this most obviously in her umbrella, but there are other elements of that as well: her hairstyle is meant to look a bit cloudy and her cool, bluish color scheme evokes rain and thunderclouds. I originally considered giving her a storm-themed raincoat as well, but it didn’t feel right so I scrapped the idea.
-Her umbrella has a ring of little “windows” in it; these are based on a set of vents which were meant to equalize the pressure inside her cover. You can see these in real pictures of her, too: they’re those little circular holes arranged in a ring around her nose.
-The shape of her dress is meant to resemble her original airship form! R101 used the “Lyon Shape,” an elongated teardrop shape invented by Hilda Lyon for use on airships and submarines; I modeled her dress off that, and the parts that flare out at the bottom represent the airship’s fins (you can see the 1930s dress design that helped inspire this idea here ). Aside from those “fin” parts, her dress is actually too tight to walk properly in, but that’s okay because she just floats everywhere anyway.
-I originally planned to give her much darker and more purplish hair, with the colors sampled from pictures of thunderclouds. I changed it to a lighter blue-gray instead so it would look better next to her light, blue-toned clothes.
-Her clothes are super shiny, probably more so than she was in real life. A high-gloss finish just felt like the right thing to do, so I did it. I’m super proud of those highlights!
-I considered giving her a scarf or a necklace, but ultimately I decided against it as I wanted a very sleek, simplistic look for her (that’s also one of the reasons why I scrapped the raincoat idea).
-The title for this one comes from Empire of the Clouds by Iron Maiden! That song is the reason I learned about R101 in the first place, so it deserves a shoutout here.

For R101’s profile, go here .

For more information on the airship herself, check out the following:
R101’s airworthiness certificate
R.101 - Registration G-FAAW
Britain’s Million-Pound Monster Comes to London