All Terrain Elf Transport

Forward the AT-ET!

In a rather different vein from my previous Christmas build with the candle and the angel, this one is pure fun and silliness.

As a Santa minifigure is still on my list of “stuff to get at some point”, my options are almost as limited for the other kind of Christmas build as they are for building some any sort of Biblical scene.

We’ve got some elves, though.

Okay, they’re the Emily Jones variety, not the Santa’s Workshop variety, but up to a point an elf is an elf is an elf. It’d be rather amusing to have Santa Claus leading a whole clan of Legolas’ kin into battle on dragons, but that’s another build. And I don’t have a Santa yet to do it with.

The words “Christmas elf mech” bounced through my mind like a rogue superball…

I’ve built an elf mech once before, but not a Christmas one (though it was posted on the old LEGO.com Galleries not here), and I thought about several options for making it Christmassy. I initially contemplated a steampunk Father Christmas mech (somehow a steampunk Santa has to go by his British name), but if I was going to use an elf for a pilot that didn’t seem quite right.

“Maybe I could make it shaped like a reindeer or something”, I thought, and the idea of a sort of chibi AT-AT popped into my head.

Of course, the All Terrain Elf Transport has antlers and a red nose, and somehow Santa Claus red seemed the only possible choice for a main colour. It’s not really in keeping with the colours of the various LEGO Elves, but that’s okay. They’re not necessarily in that world right now, and Santa’s colours overrule here anyway.

Farran’s green outfit made him the best choice to actually drive the AT-ET, but Azari wanted in as well. As hers was the only cold-weather mantle fabric element I could find I let her.

Anyway, have a rather reindeeroid AT-AT derivative, and enjoy!

Where the AT-ATs Roam

Sooner or later, every LEGO builder who’s any sort of Star Wars fan is going to attempt an AT-AT at something more substantial than palmtop scale.

This is my first try.

Star Wars vehicles, scenes, characters and battles have been modeled again and again to such a high standard of accuracy and modelling that really, you need massive chutzpah to attempt anything from the Star Wars universe. Especially something from the films; especially from the Original Trilogy.

This obviously isn’t going to be winning any prizes on Eurobricks’ Star Wars forum or anything, what with its general studdiness and too-long back end, but as a first attempt, “you-too-can-build-the-AT-AT” model, it’s reasonable.

I actually wasn’t really considering building an AT-AT at all; this whole build started out with the microscale snowspeeder (with which I’m actually more pleased than the big Imperial walker).

But having built this little speeder, it occurred to me that it might be possible, with my household’s relatively-limited-for-an-AFOL brick inventory, to build an Imperial walker to proper scale with the speeder.

Official LEGO’s never done this. I’d actually love to see someone build an AT-AT to full minifig scale based on the size of one of the snowspeeder sets, but the sheer size of it probably prevents all but the most dedicated builder, and with all the expanses of plate armour the hull’s actually fairly uninteresting at that scale.

Still, what I can only dream about at minifig scale I can finally actually build at microscale.

If I was building it again I’d correct that too-long rear end, but I don’t possess enough tiles to successfully destud it having used this construction method, and I don’t possess enough grey 1xwhatever bricks to build it using the other main technique family for producing a smooth finish.

Ah well. Steps on the path, my friends. Steps on the path. This build was mostly about getting past the intimidation factor of all the really huge $120+ official AT-AT sets and the even huger and more detailed Imperial walker MOCs; a figuring-out that really, building an AT-AT doesn’t have to be that hard.

I think a lot of my mental hangups come from my childhood attempts to build one back when The Empire Strikes Back was a new film and we were still waiting with bated breath for Revenge of the Jedi, as rumour had it the next film would be called.

Trying to make an articulated All Terrain Armoured Transport that would actually stand up back when the black Technic friction pins were a nonexistent brick was way beyond my youthful skill level. I wasn’t about to build a statue; if I was building it, it was going to move. But I couldn’t find a way to keep it from sprawling on the ice like a giant robot Bambi, so I eventually gave up on the idea as an impossibility with the bricks of the era.

And I’ve carried that sense that building AT-ATs is one of the hardest challenges facing any builder with me through all those years.

So here’s an AT-AT. Not a very good one, perhaps, but here it is.

And it really wasn’t hard at all.

Now, a Mon Calamari battlecruiser, with all those lovely stylish curves? That would be truly difficult!