Designer Robot

For me, the Creator theme is one of the great unsung LEGO heroes. LEGO have been pumping out Creator sets since 2001 - 297 sets at last count, the vast majority of which have been unheralded and unhyped, at least until the advent of the Creator Expert line this year. Admittedly, Creator sets can be a bit of a mixed bag, but there's invariably at least one or two every year that catch my eye. Creator sets are usually cheaper than average, not least because of the lack of expensive licensing fees, and they generally contain fewer specialised parts, making them better parts packs for general building. With the exception of the Creator Expert sets, they also characteristically include building instructions for more than one model.

Over the years, a number of Creator sub-themes have come and gone, for instance the short-lived Creator Inventor line consisting of 4 sets released in 2003, and the Creator Designer subtheme which hung around for 3 years from 2003 until 2005 and brought with it an impressive array of 54 sets, although a lot of those were polybags. Buried within those 54 sets are a few genuinely interesting offerings which could easily slip under the radar, and for that reason I'm bringing you a review of one of them today - Set 4508 Titan XP.

The box has a sizeable footprint - it's 15 inches (38 cm) square. The front of the box (above - click to enlarge) features an action shot of the Titan XP robot against a backdrop of blurry CGI brick and plate outlines; this backdrop is part of the Creator Designer branding, appearing on the packaging of other 2004 Creator Designer sets as well. On the bottom right of the box are a couple of small inset pictures highlighting play features of the set, and on the bottom left is really the only clue so far that the set contains parts and instructions for more than just the Titan XP model. The back of the box (below - click to enlarge) shows the Titan XP robot from behind, plus pictures of the supplementary models for which instructions are provided.

The front of the box lifts up to reveal the contents - a generous 784 parts plus an instruction booklet, although there's no DSS and no minifigures. The presence of just one instruction booklet is somewhat surprising given the substantial parts count and all the alternate builds, but it's pretty hefty - A4 sized and 104 pages from cover to cover. The front cover (below) is almost identical to the front of the box.

There's a summary of the models for which instructions are provided inside the front cover (below). The different builds are graded by difficulty level; the 'Quick' build consists of a couple of small robots, while the intermediate, or "Experienced' build, is a larger two-legged robot which morphs into a flying machine, and Titan XP is obviously the 'Advanced' model.

The overwhelming majority of the instruction booklet is of course taken up with building instructions for the various models; the only advertising to be found is on the back cover (below) which highlights the other 2004 Creator Designer sets. Note the typo beneath the shark - that's actually Set 4506 Deep Sea Predators rather than Set 4507 which can be seen immediately below. See what I mean about some of these sets slipping beneath the radar ? There's some good stuff there....

The instruction booklet also contains a full inventory of the parts contained within the set, and we'll get on to the spectacular parts palette momentarily. My copy of the set is a used example which I sourced from eBay, and as you can see from the picture below it looks like the previous owner wasn't quite as obsessive about the condition of his/her instruction booklets as I am...

Regular readers of this blog will know that I like to highlight a few parts of interest when I'm reviewing a set. I have to say however that I really had my work cut out with this set - parts-wise it's a veritable treasure trove, and sorting through all the unusual and/or rare elements took me ages. For starters, I don't think I've ever seen a set containing quite such a large selection of sand blue parts; this rare colour has recently made a bit of a comeback in Set 10218 Pet Shop but other than that it must be close to a decade since the appearance of sand blue parts in sets. And not only does the Titan XP set contain a huge variety of different sand blue parts (you can see a selection of them in the picture below - click to enlarge), but a number of them have only ever appeared in this set. Unique parts include the sand blue 2 x 2 corner brick and corner plate, the modified 1 x 1 plate with tooth, the 1 x 6 x 2 arch with curved top, a number of different 45 degree slope bricks of various types, the left and right 6 x 2 inverted wedges and the 1 x 2 stepped vehicle fairing with two pins which you can see near the middle of the picture. Other sand blue parts in the set including the left and right 3 x 2 and 4 x 2 wedge plates have only ever appeared in a couple of sets, and none of them have appeared in more than 7 sets.

And it doesn't stop there - in addition to all the sand blue elements there are a host of elements in other colours which are worthy of mention. A number of the orange parts in the picture below are unique to this set, including the modified 2 x 2 brick with the rotation ball joint, the modified 1 x 2 tile with handle and the left and right 4 x 2 wedge plates, as is the chrome silver 1 x 1 round plate. All other parts in the picture below have appeared in fewer than 10 sets, with the majority being restricted to just 1 or 2 sets in addition to the Titan XP. Note the dark bley minifigure legs with light bley hips; as previously stated, this set doesn't contain any actual minifigures, and you'll see later how those minifig legs are pressed into alternative service. While it's always nice to get your hands on a set overflowing with rare parts, the obvious downside if you're buying pre-owned is that you'll be unable to cannabalise parts from your other sets if there's anything missing, although there's always Bricklink....

And so on to the build.... The alternate models didn't really grab me, to be honest - I sometimes start off with the supplementary models when I tackle a Creator set, but not on this occasion - so I jumped straight to page 62 of the instruction booklet and the Titan XP build. First up were the robot's legs and feet. Almost immediately I found myself having some difficulties with colour discrimination in the building instructions; sand blue was surprisingly difficult to distinguish from the different greys in artificial light, although the instructions were otherwise pretty easy to follow. You can see one of the Titan's feet below (click to enlarge) - big, chunky and featuring a number of the rare sand blue parts I mentioned earlier. The legs attach to the feet via a Technic rotation joint - if you look closely you can just about see the black pin which will slot into the rotation joint socket at the bottom of the leg peeking out from the top of the foot.

The completed legs and feet can be seen in the picture below (click to enlarge). Including the 'hips' and 'ankles', each leg features no less than 4 different points of articulation, of which 3 utilise Technic rotation joints. In theory, all these points of articulation confer almost unlimited possibilities when it comes to posing the model, although in practice there's a major trade-off which I'll get to shortly....

The torso and head (below - click to enlarge) are rather quicker to assemble than the legs and feet. Once again sand blue and orange are prominent, with a few chrome silver round 1 x 1 plates adding some additional bling. The light bley columns protruding from the top of the head can be angled further outwards if desired and the black 'back pack' can detach, but rather surprisingly the head itself is fixed and can't be rotated without modification.

Once the torso and head are complete it's time to build and attach the arms, complete with monstrous 1980's-style shoulder pads. The upper body can be then be dropped onto the legs and we're done (picture below - click to enlarge); the upper body attaches by way of a single pin, allowing it to rotate a full 360 degrees. Note the ingenious use of minifigure legs as the Titan XP's fingers.

First impressions are that the proportions aren't quite right - to my eyes the upper body and head seem too small for the arms and legs. That having been said, at around 14 inches / 36 cm in height it's still a fairly imposing model, and taller I think than any other 'official' LEGO robot or mech that I've previously built. You can get a better look at how the legs and arms fit together via the side-on view below (click to enlarge). The construction of the legs brings to mind a crazy paving mosaic from this angle, but the effect isn't quite so jarring "in the flesh".

Many of the LEGO robots and mechs I've built in the past have had a decidedly unfinished look when viewed from behind. The Titan XP doesn't suffer the same fate, however, with the back having a significantly more polished appearance (below - click to enlarge) than many other sets I could mention. This view reveals the preponderance of sand blue in the legs, and you can also clearly see the rather cool sand blue pods projecting backwards and downwards from the lower part of the legs. 

As previously mentioned, the multiple articulation points allow for a substantial range of movement and mean that the Titan XP can be manipulated into a variety of neat poses like the one below (click to enlarge). The downside of this is that the sheer weight of the model seems to overwhelm the joints in the legs, making the model decidedly unstable and liable to collapse or overbalance. Having just recently completed one large and somewhat unstable mechanical beast with legs, it's really quite ironic that the next model I end up building should also turn out to be a large, somewhat unstable mechanical beast with legs.....

It seems a bit bonkers for LEGO to have incurred the costs associated with including so many unique elements in this relatively low profile set, but I'm pleased they did - what an awesome colour scheme ! The combination of sand blue and orange, and the stripes on the legs, bring to mind the livery of the iconic Gulf Porsche (below) from 1970 which only makes me like the Titan XP more.... OK, so the Porsche is more medium blue than sand blue but hopefully you get my drift...

To give you an idea of scale, I've posed the Titan XP alongside an Exo Force mech that I reviewed a while back - Set 7714 Golden Guardian from 2007 (picture below - click to enlarge). While the Golden Guardian is admittedly smaller and can't be posed as easily, it's a lot more stable.

Containing 784 pieces and released in 2004, Set 4508 Titan XP really is a hidden gem buried deep within the Creator back catalogue. It's by no means perfect - the proportions don't look quite right to me and it's horribly unstable - but aided and abetted by that wonderful colour scheme I think it looks spectacular, and then there's the unique parts palette.... If you're looking to pick one up then eBay is probably your cheapest bet if you're willing to wait for one to come up - I paid less than £20 plus shipping for my used copy about a year ago. Otherwise head over to Bricklink - at time of writing the cheapest used example with a box is around £45 plus shipping, and you can get a new, sealed copy for little more than £50. Given that the RRP back in 2004 was £34.99 that's a veritable bargain I reckon.

UCS AT-AT : They think it's all over...

When I last wrote, the various AT-AT sections had finally been completed, so it should simply have been a case of putting them all together and the AT-AT would be done. As I'm sure you've gathered by now, however, nothing about this project has been simple, and there were actually a couple of things I'd need to do before I could embark upon final assembly....

Firstly, as I've mentioned a number of times during this seemingly interminable journey, the LDD files I've been following were in very much 'first draft' status when I received them, and predictably enough a number of issues have been identified. Cavegod (Pete), the AT-AT's designer, has dutifully revised the LDD files along the way, but there was consequently always going to be a need for me to make a few tweaks to the various completed sections prior to final assembly of the model. Much of the last week or so has therefore been spent making these modifications, some of which necessitated a wait for a couple of Bricklink orders to arrive.

The biggest issue to remedy involved the internal skeleton of the body (above) which thanks to a mistake in the LDD file ended up one stud too long and therefore needed chopping down to size. This sounds potentially quite involved, but in practice it wasn't too big a deal, particularly as Pete has now revised the offending LDD file so I could closely study the necessary modifications and implement them. A further issue concerned the dark bley platforms which project out from the sides of the body, one on each side (you can see one of them in the picture above); these structures were unfinished and slightly out of position on the original LDD file. Once again the LDD file has now been corrected, and thankfully the necessary modifications were straightforward, although they did require a few additional parts.

Lastly, I decided to make a couple of tweaks to increase the stability of the legs as I was nervous about their ability to support the weight of the AT-AT's body. The joint between the foot and the lower part of the leg (above) isn't very strong, and as a consequence, when the leg pivots at the ankle and the weight of the body is applied there's a risk of the leg giving way. This is guaranteed to bring 6000+ pieces crashing down so is to be avoided if at all possible.... Following some discussion, Pete suggested a simple modification to help support the leg when it's in a flexed position, and in addition to this I made a couple of further tweaks to increase the strength of the ankle joint and offer additional support and stability. Only when these had been completed did I feel sufficiently confident to proceed with final assembly of the AT-AT.

So here we go, then.... Step 1 : Attach neck to body. A couple of Technic pins protruding forward from the front of the body act as a guide to ensure that the neck is in position, after which the neck can be firmly bolted on by threading a bley Technic axle down through a series of interlocking, overlapping Technic liftarms sticking out from the neck and body. You can see the results below - click the pictures to enlarge them.

Step 2 : Attach the legs. Before I even attempted this came the realisation that with the legs attached, the AT-AT would be too big for my rudimentary photographic layout.... So where to build and photograph it ? Well, I didn't want to assemble it on my floor on the basis that the carpet wouldn't provide a firm base for the AT-AT to stand on. That, and I really didn't fancy its chances of surviving for long on the floor in the middle of my study. A solution was found in the form of the tables which support my work-in-progress LEGO City layout; thanks to my glacial rate of progress (yes, yes - I know I promised to provide an update on that project about a year ago, but I've been busy....) there's still a huge empty space in the middle of it. A space big enough for a colossal AT-AT, in fact. The downside is that there's no nice plain backdrop there to photograph the AT-AT against, so apologies for that - you'll just have to live with the distracting background until I can find a way of properly photographing it....

OK, adequate space located, it was time to figure out how on earth to go about precariously perching the body on top of the legs. Having tried to lift the body with one hand a few months back with catastrophic results (my hand-hold came away from the body, which proceeded to plummet to the floor and distintegrate on hitting the floor....) I decided to call for help. Pete tells me he's built a handle for the body of his AT-AT to allow him to attach the legs single-handedly, but I've yet to do this, and so it was that my reluctant wife was called into action and asked to hold the body of the AT-AT at just the right height for me to attach the legs. Attaching the legs involved threading a single Technic axle through the top of each leg and into the lower part of the body; the outer end of each axle also holds in place the large printed dishes that you can see at the top of each leg. Once each leg was attached, there came a point when I had to tell my wife to carefully let go of the body to see whether the legs would support the weight without collapsing. I don't mind admitting that this was incredibly nerve-wracking - if I hadn't seen Pete's AT-AT in the flesh I would have doubted that the legs could hold the weight. We both held our breath, but thankfully the legs held firm, and with a huge sigh of relief I stepped back and recorded the moment for posterity below (click to enlarge).

Step 3 : Attach the sides of the body. Here the concern was less about actually attaching the sides to the body and more about the fear that all the pushing and pulling involved in getting the sides into the right position and bolting them to the Technic frame would destabilise the legs, causing them to give way and bring everything crashing down. The other potential problem I faced was the fragility of the sides themselves - as previously described they're not very robust and have a tendency to break apart at the slightest excuse. In the event, attaching the sides turned out to be reasonably straightforward and didn't even require the help of my glamorous assistant. The sides are suspended from the top of the body's Technic frame by a couple of Technic pins with stop bush, and they rest at the correct angle relative to the body as a result of being pushed outwards by the platforms projecting from the sides of the body. The only complication did in fact turn out to be the fragility of the sides themselves - they broke apart a couple of times while I was trying to manipulate them into the correct position for attachment, setting me back a few minutes on each occasion while I effected a repair. Eventually it was done, and you can see the AT-AT with one and then both sides attached below (click pictures to enlarge).

Step 4 : Attach the head. This somewhat unexpectedly turned out to be one of the trickiest jobs. As you can see in the pictures above, projecting forwards from the front of the neck is a black rectangular structure with a couple of bley tiles on top and a bley Technic pin sticking out of the front. This structure slides into a slot inside the AT-AT's head, and the pin anchors it when it's in the correct position. Sounds simple. Lining up the head, getting the structure into the slot and getting the pin to click into place took a number of attempts, though, and all the while I was sweating that all the pushing and pulling would make the whole thing collapse. The head is quite fragile, and with all the pressure I was applying I managed to break the windscreen and roof section off the head. This however turned out to be a blessing in disguise as it ended up being easier to slide the head on to the neck without the roof being attached as I could better see what I was doing. Once the head was locked into position I carefully replaced the roof and windscreen and took the picture below (click to enlarge); the gap between the side of the head and the roof is a little wider than it should be as a result of all the pushing and pulling but this should be easy enough to fix with a bit of careful manipulation...

Step 5 : Cover the body. The roof which covers the body of the AT-AT consists of 3 distinct sections which are dropped into place one at a time. Fitting the roof sections was pretty straightforward - all sit on top of the upper edges of the sides of the body - and the fit was mostly pretty good although a little final tweaking is still needed in a couple of places. Also, the rear section has a tendency to slide backwards, and I'm going to need to add a stop to the underside to prevent this. The completed AT-AT with the roof sections fitted can be seen below.

And the finishing touch ? Well, no Star Wars UCS model is complete without a display plaque to go with it, and fellow AT-AT builder Morten has designed a suitable display sticker (below) which I now have a copy of, so thanks, Morten !

And so more than 11 months after I published my first post about building a copy of Pete's AT-AT it's finally finished ! Although I've seen Pete's original on a number of occasions I have to admit that I was still taken aback by the sheer size of the thing when I'd finished building my own - it's absolutely huge ! The scale is somewhat hard to convey, but the rebel pilot minifigure that I've posed on the top of the AT-AT's body in the picture below (click to enlarge) should hopefully give you a sense of how massive it is....

Regarding the final piece count, it was around 6,220, give or take; I can't offer an exact figure as it's calculated from the first draft of the LDD files which contain a few errors as previously mentioned, plus I've made a few minor modifications along the way to improve stability. So let's say 6,250 for the sake of argument. And the cost ? Well, I had around a third of the pieces already, and I estimate that the rest cost me about £600 including shipping, although I'm certain I could have done it cheaper if I'd shopped around more; I believe that fellow AFOL Rocao recently managed to source the necessary parts for around $600 excluding shipping, and Pete reckons that the whole lot only cost him £250...(!)

And lastly, was it worth the effort and the cost ? Well, on the one hand I can safely say that it's been quite the most frustrating build I've ever experienced, by a country mile. Admittedly this was in part because I was to some extent a guinea pig. working with the first draft of Pete's LDD files, but mostly it's just because it's a mighty tricky build at times. It's also nerve-wracking to put all the sections together, wildy impractical to display, and can't be moved when constructed.... But despite all of that, just look at the thing ! As a huge Star Wars fan, and indeed someone for whom the AT-AT is perhaps my favourite vehicle from the Star Wars universe, it's definitely been worth all the expense and pain to see this monster standing proudly in my house. Massive kudos to Pete for designing the thing and putting together a set of LDD files for it, and if anyone wants to get hold of a copy of the most recent version of the LDD files and have a go at building one yourself then please get in touch and I'll forward your details to Pete.

So what now ? Well, plans are afoot to show the AT-AT later this year at a public event where it'll be part of a display featuring a number of big Star Wars MOCs - I'll share more details in due course. Until then I think I'll just stare at the finished model with a huge grin on my face while I decide what to build next....

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