UCS AT-AT : the build begins....

Busy, busy, busy over the past couple of weeks. After returning from a(nother) business trip to the U.S. I spent some time wandering around Paris with my family, followed by a few days on the beach down on the south coast of England soaking up the sun. I accept that many will consider my juxtaposition of the words "sun" and "England" to be an oxymoron, but to my surprise the weather was great - honest.

Not the LEGO version....

Anyway, all this time away from home has resulted in a distinct lack of building time of late, but as promised I did finally manage to make a start on the AT-AT between trips, having previously finished sourcing and sorting the 6,200+ constituent parts as described here and here.

The first AT-AT LDD file that Pete sent me back when I started out on this project was the beast's legs, so that's where I decided to start the build. The legs also seemed less daunting than other sections, notably the body, so I figured I'd hopefully be easing myself in gently....

Getting up and running was simple enough - boot up my Mac, start LDD, load the relevant LDD file (above), and produce a set of building instructions by clicking 'Tool Box" in the LDD menu and selecting the "Generate building guide" option. From this point on, I had hoped it would be plain sailing, but I hadn't factored in the vagaries of the LDD-generated building guide (sample page below - click to enlarge) which had me scratching my head in utter bemusement at times. Building guide offences included sequencing the build in a plainly illogical fashion such that I had to dismantle completed sections in order to make further progress, and randomly leaving sections only half finished in order to focus on different sections, only later returning to finish off what I'd started earlier. I also lost count of the number of times that the guide called for me to suspend pieces in mid-air as if by magic, only instructing me to join the floating sections together by way of invisible technic pins many steps later. In short, the LDD-generated guide left much to be desired, but I guess it's all part of the fun....

Despite all my complaining, by using a combination of the building guide, the parts listing and a few reference photographs, it really wasn't too hard to make progress. I'd normally have built all four legs at the same time for the sake of efficiency, but on this occasion I decided to build just one leg first of all to ensure that I'd worked through any issues in the building guide, prior to cracking on with the rest. As it turned out, I'm pleased I did this as it prevented some tedious reworking.

I started out by building the AT-AT foot and 'ankle' (pictures below). The design of the AT-AT extensively utilises SNOT techniques, and one way this manifests in the feet is via the use of numerous modified 1 x 4 bricks with four studs on one side in order that slope bricks can be positioned vertically to collectively approximate the circular base of the foot, as you can see in the pictures below. I love the "mock hydraulic" connection between the foot and 'ankle' which is acccomplished by way of a ball and socket joint, a 12L Technic Axle covered in greebles and a universal joint - little details like this are one of the reasons why I think the model is so special and worthy of my time and money. In terms of functionality, there's a modest degree of movement possible at the 'ankle' as you'll see later on, and the 'toes' can also flex and extend a little in the event of placement on uneven surfaces, although on your head be it if you decide to put the finished model anywhere that isn't flat....

Foot, inner aspect

Foot, outer aspect

A couple of people have pointed out that it's hard to get a sense of the size of the AT-AT from the pictures they've seen, which is fair comment. In an attempt to convey some sense of scale I've therefore posed a minifigure - a Snowspeeder pilot, although I did consider pressing General Veers into service - next to the foot of the beast in the picture below (click to enlarge). For the more numerically minded, each foot has a diameter of around 18 cm, or 7 inches. Suffice to say it's plenty big....

Once the foot and 'ankle' are done it's onwards and upwards with the 'shin' and 'knee' sections (below). I was initially confused as to why the design called for the use of so many stacked 2 x 6 plates. Pete explained that he did this in order to increase the strength of the legs - stacked plates confer significantly more clutch than stacked bricks, which anyone who has tried to prise two plates apart can readily confirm... The light bluish grey printed 6 x 6 inverted dish on the outer aspect of the leg has appeared in only 2 sets to date - Set 7675 AT-TE Walker, and very appropriately, Set 10178 Motorized Walking AT-AT.

Construction of the upper part of the leg continues in much the same fashion, with the use of lots of stacked 2 x 8 plates to provide additional strength, plus a nice greebled section and another printed inverted dish on the outer aspect. This dish is 10 studs in diameter and has appeared in only one set to date - Set 7748 Corporate Alliance Tank Droid. You can see a couple of views of the completed leg below (click to enlarge).

What's not immediately evident from the pictures above is that the design permits some limited movement at the 'ankle', and you can see the extent of this in the picture below. It looks as if the leg should over-balance in this position, but in fact the foot is sufficiently heavy that the leg can stand quite happily at this angle without the need for additional support. I was also quite surprised that the weight of the upper part of the leg doesn't cause it to snap off at the 'ankle'. 

Having completed the first leg and worked through a few glitches in the building guide in the process, I felt sufficiently confident to 'parallel process' the remaining three legs, and you can see where I've got to with these so far in the picture below. I doubt it'll take me much more than two or three hours maximum to wrap these up now that I know what I'm doing. 

Further updates to follow in due course.... I've not yet decided which section to move on to next after I've completed the legs - any requests ?!


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