UCS AT-AT : Body Beautiful

So after the joys and distractions of STEAM, closely followed by another foreign business trip, I was finally able to crack on with the AT-AT over the past few days. When I last wrote about the UCS AT-AT build I'd got partway through the 422 building steps required to construct the internal skeleton and body of the AT-AT, and you can remind yourselves of the story so far here.

Before I could jump back into the build, I had a couple of things to consider. First up, should I upgrade to the latest version of LDD ? LEGO have released a new version (4.3.5) of the software, and now every time I boot up LDD I'm asked if I want to download the new version. Normally I'd dive straight in, but given I was partway through building a section of the AT-AT I was concerned about the possibility of the new version of LDD generating a building guide in a different sequence to the one I'd been using previously, meaning I wouldn't just be able to pick up where I'd left off. Also, I'm told that the new version of LDD doesn't like one of Pete's LDD files and omits a couple of pieces from it which have allegedly not been placed correctly (!). All things considered, I decided to hold off upgrading LDD for now.

Secondly, I've had an issue with LDD which appeared when I upgraded my iMac operating system to the latest version about a week ago. Since then, it's been impossible to see the outlines of the pieces on LDD; there's an option to show the outlines within the LDD menu but this is now set to 'off' and greyed out so I can't select it. This obviously makes it much trickier to see how everything fits together. I spent some time looking for a fix, but wasn't able to find anything so eventually decide to just press on with the build and hope for the best. Although now too late for this particular section of the model, if anybody reading this has any idea how to remedy this issue I'd be very grateful. I'm hoping that at the very least I'll eventually regain the ability to see the outlines when I upgrade to the latest version of LDD, but we shall see....

Anyway, back to business. Wrapping up the internal skeleton and body of the AT-AT involved a number of distinct stages - lengthening the floor a bit, construction of the front wall of the body, construction of the rear of the AT-AT, fashioning a robust Technic frame to ultimately support the roof and hang the sides on, and finally attaching all the multiple sub-assemblies that I'd constructed earlier, including figuring out where all the legion of small, individual parts were supposed to attach (see my previous AT-AT posting for a rant about that particular task....).

Completion of the floor and front wall of the body (pictures below - as usual, click to enlarge) was relatively straightforward, in stark contrast to the rear of the AT-AT which turned out to be hideously fragile and unstable until the very end when everything came together. The sizeable black and yellow section attached to the floor is the block which will eventually support the head and neck. A number of subassemblies fit inside this structure and should ideally be installed as you go along rather than at the very end, which is what the ludicrous LDD building guide would have you do....

A feature of the LDD file for the AT-AT body is the presence of a number of loose parts and structures which, on account of LDD's idiosyncrasies, aren't shown as being attached to the rest of the body; you can see these leftovers in the bottom left of the picture immediately below. As some of you are aware, it just so happens that I was fortunate enough to have seen cavegod's AT-AT at STEAM less than two weeks ago, so I took the opportunity to grab a few pictures of the rear of the AT-AT (below) while I was there. The pictures are pretty rough, but they were very useful in helping me to complete the rear of the AT-AT and figure out how all the loose bits and pieces are supposed to attach.

The last major part of the build is the long Technic section (picture below) which bridges the gap between the front and rear walls of the AT-AT body and which will eventually support the roof. Many of the "free floating" Technic pins that I commented on the last time I posted an update ended up being employed in the construction of the uppermost part of this structure, and you'd be well advised to work out where they fit and pop them into place as you go along. You can do this by jumping back and forth between the relevant pages of the building guide and the last page. Yes, it's a total pain in the backside, but it beats trying to attach them when you've finished building everything else which is once again what the building guide suggests....

I did my utmost to try and attach the multiple sub-assemblies and loose parts that I'd been collecting together during the previous 421 steps as I went along; all that was left therefore once I'd finally managed to stagger through to step 422 (the final step) of the building guide were a collection of Technic liftarms, the drive motors and the structures to which the legs would attach. The penultimate task was to drop the Technic section on to the top of the body section and knit these sections together (below) with the Technic liftarms.

Last but not least, I bolted the drive engines and the structures to which the legs would attach onto the underside of the body and I was done ! This last step was pretty tricky, but the results are impressive as you can see from the picture immediately below.

I experienced a real sense of achievement when I finally finished this section of the AT-AT build. Between the horrible LDD building guide and an at-times genuinely tricky build it's been a while since I was challenged this much by a LEGO model. Completing the AT-AT body used up 1,282 pieces, to add to the 2,120 pieces that went into the legs, meaning I'm now well over halfway done overall.

Next up is the neck section, after which I can finally upgrade LDD....


<-- Building the AT-AT : Part 4                              Building the AT-AT : Part 6 -- >

UCS AT-AT : Tricky

Last time I wrote about the UCS AT-AT build (here) I'd completed one of the AT-AT legs and started work on the remaining three. It took me longer than expected to finish them up (doesn't it always ?) but I eventually completed them as you can see below. Astonishingly, the four legs alone are made up of a total of 2,120 pieces, which means that once I'd completed them the model was more than a third finished, in terms of part count at least.

Suitably confident after having largely breezed through the first part of the build, I decided to face my demons head on and attempt the AT-AT body next. This was really the only part of the build that I'd been facing with a degree of trepidation, on account of the complexity of the structure plus designer Pete's warning that there might be mistakes in the LDD rendition of his design. Having at times struggled through the distinctly illogical LDD-generated building guide while constructing the legs, I was also wary of what the building guide would throw at me this time round given the significantly greater level of complexity that it needed to negotiate. As it turned out, I was right to be apprehensive....

Above you can see a screen grab of the LDD file for the AT-AT body (click to enlarge). It's 'only' made up of 1285 parts in total, so significantly less than the legs. Once again I had the added complication that the LDD file had been tidied up a bit by Pete after I'd sourced the parts, so some of the hidden internal pieces I'd collected were a different colour to those in the LDD file. Thankfully however this didn't turn out to be too much of a problem.

I got a hint of the challenge to come as I waited for LDD to generate the building guide for this section of the model; the operation took almost 10 minutes on my (reasonably high spec) iMac, yielding an impressive 422 building steps. First to be built were the structures to which the legs would later attach plus the large cylindrical structures slung under the body which I assume are the engines, then a bunch of greebles, and finally the floor of the body and the internal skeleton upon which everything else would ultimately hang. At time of writing I'm up to step 343 of 422, so a good way into the build, and you can see a few pictures of the build so far below (click to enlarge).

Attachment points for front legs & forward engine section.

Attachment points for back legs & rear engine section

Work in progress : Body - floor

Work in progress : Body - underside

Contruction of the body has been, to put it politely, rather tricky.... This is in large part due to the ridiculous LDD-generated building guide which I've been struggling to follow. You may recall that while building the legs I wrote about the sometimes baffling and illogical order of the building steps, plus the expectation that the builder is able to make parts float in mid-air as if by magic. Well, the building guide for the body has taken these issues to a whole new level of absurdity, and it's been a significant challenge to follow along at times. I've attached a screen grab of one page of the building guide below to try and illustrate my point; at one stage there were up to 50 Technic pins, axles, sub-assemblies and various other loose parts floating in mid-air. These are positioned in 3D space exactly where they will eventually reside when later sections of the build drop into place, but you're given no guidance on how they attach to everything around them. At the point when later sections eventually drop into place en masse, therefore, you have to figure out what on earth all these free-floating bits and pieces attach to. This isn't too much of a problem for most of the larger sub-assemblies, but for the individual free-floating parts, and particularly the Technic pins and axles, it's a huge problem because you can't actually see them when everything else is in place - they're hidden by other parts and/or located deep within the build. All you can therefore do is study the final page of the instructions in minute, painstaking detail and, skipping backwards and forwards between the final page and earlier pages, try and figure out where everything goes.  It's a colossal and totally unnecessary pain in the arse.

LDD is a superb tool, but a build of this size and complexity has seriously shown up the limitations of the building guide generator. Even so, I'm getting there, slowly but surely, and next time I post an update I should have finished the body and decided on what to tackle next. Hopefully....


<-- Building the AT-AT : Part 3                                     Building the AT-AT : Part 5 -->

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 ?!


<-- Building the AT-AT : Part 2                                        Building the AT-AT : Part 4 -->

Star Wars Building Frenzy

So, barely 9 months after I attended my first ever LEGO event (The Great Western LEGO Show at STEAM last year) I'm preparing to actively participate in an event myself for the very first time. In less than two weeks, over the weekend of 16th and 17th July 2011, the Brickish Association (BA) will put on an exhibition of LEGO models at the UK's National Space Centre (NSC) in Leicester, in partnership with the LEGO company who will be promoting the LEGO City Space sets.

Given the location of the event, and the fact that this year marks a number of significant space-related anniversaries (apparently it's 50 years since Yuri Gagarin went into space and 30 years since the first Space Shuttle flight, for instance), there will be a distinctly space-themed flavour to the exhibition. Official LEGO space-related sets from down the years and also some spectacular creations designed by BA members will be on display, although there will also be some non space-related LEGO creations on show, for good measure.

The space theme has given me the perfect excuse to organise a display of LEGO Star Wars Ultimate Collector Series (UCS) sets for the event. This isn't just any display, however - if everything goes to plan, all 17 official UCS sets to date will be built and on display at NSC, as well as a selection of excellent unofficial UCS-style models. There will also be a large number of non-UCS Star Wars sets on display.

As well as organising the UCS display, I'll also be providing some of models for it. A number of intrepid fellow BA members have also stepped up and pledged to provide UCS models for the display, although some serious arm-twisting was needed to persuade someone to build, and more to the point transport, the huge UCS Millenium Falcon to the show..... Finally I was left with only Set 10143 Death Star II to find a builder for, and when no offers were forthcoming I bit the bullet and started to build it myself a few nights ago (work in progress picture below - click to enlarge). I'll post some more pics and a review of this unusual set in a future blog posting.

Set 10143 Death Star II - under construction.....

As well as the Death Star II, I'll also be taking Set 10212 Imperial Shuttle and Set 10026 Special Edition Naboo Starfighter to NSC.

Set 10212 Imperial Shuttle

Set 10026 Naboo Starfighter

In addition to the official UCS sets, there will also be some outstanding MOCs on display. I'm particularly indebted to Cavegod who, as well as promising to bring 4 of the official UCS sets including the Millenium Falcon, will also somehow be carting 10 or more of his amazing UCS MOCs to NSC. These include his stunning AT-AT (pic below - click to enlarge) which I've previously blogged about here, and his newest masterpiece - an enormous Sandcrawler which hasn't to my knowledge ever been shown before in public and which promises to be amazing. In addition to Cavegod's UCS creations, there'll be a number of other superb MOCs on display, including a rather lovely UCS Venator (pic below) which was the subject of another recent blog posting.

Cavedog's superb (and enormous) AT-AT

Unofficial UCS Venator

But if I still haven't whetted your appetite enough, maybe this'll help..... In September, LEGO will release Set 10221 Super Star Destroyer. This will be the 18th official UCS Star Wars set that LEGO have released since it all began in 1999, and I'm delighted to reveal that the model will be proudly on display at NSC alongside the 17 already-released official UCS sets, two months before it goes on sale. I expect to take delivery of the unassembled display model later this week, and I can't wait to dive in and start building ! I'll try and post some pics of the build together with my usual over-inclusive commentary before NSC, but if time defeats me I'll certainly aim to post something as soon as possible after the event, so watch this space....

Set 10221 UCS Super Star Destroyer - coming to NSC on 16th & 17th July

All this of course means that I'll be engaged in something of a nocturnal LEGO building frenzy for the next 2 weeks if I'm going to to get everything built in time, but who needs sleep when there's all that LEGO to be built ?!