Hi I started some months ago a challenging project called nightmare 101… the construction of the AT-ST from AMT/ERTL… you’ll say that maybe I’m little neurotic… well try to super-detail it… boy… I remenber you folks that I started this project two months ago so I already finished it but in order to show you the proccess I’ll pretend I’m working on it describing every little step of the way…I’ll appreciate the questioning and comentaries for future jobs… well any way I hope you enjoy the postings…
Antonio Ces
This is the art of the box…
I started tearing appart the to portions of the head, assembling the head without the top and the front of it… this would made space for the rest of the future work… I added some extra armor plates in the sides and some pin detail… according to the pictures I found. I had to full fill the inner walls to achieve consistance and the appropiatte structure for future work.
Once the filler get dry I started to scracth the cockpit according to the cross-section draw I have of the AT-ST and using spare parts from other kits. I also used three fotograms of the cockpit from “the Return of the Jedi” movie that I found on internet… that’s all the reference I had. It’s taking shape now…
I also scratch the front desk of the cockpit with some metal (copper wire), resin left overs and plastic from other kits and opened the view ports of the front face.
A front pre-view… not very revealing, uh? well you’ll get the idea…
And a couple of general view of the overall progress…
I started to modify de main twin blaster cannon. This mods were concentrated in the rotation wheel, rear armor plate, energy feed lines and other details…
These are the interior pannels, seats, front and back computer pannels of the entire cockpit… all of them are specially designed to be putted together and conform the cockpit…
The next batch of pictures despicts the detail added to the body of the AT-ST… to be fair with AMT/ERTL this is the only kit of this subject but, still, it is a very innacurate kit. Extensive modifications had to be made:
a) the left leg had to be cut off
b) some detail had to be added in the main engine section
c) hydraulics systems and main hidraulic line in the front
After detailling the body I grab the cross-section of the AT-ST and I check the legs. Again the differences between the kit and the original (despicted in the book) were to far away so it needed intervention… deep intervention specially in the legs ancles… in this batch of pictures I’ll show to you the mods there.
First I cut off the shock absorbers of the ancles to the bone in order to start from the leg reconstructing the hole ancle. After that I added some plastic and brass wire to made a correct one as shown.
At this point I saw that the claws has to be modify as well… boy… more work comming up in next batches on pictures…
Antonio Awesome work on the veteran kit! Very nice kitbash up in the main office, and considering the scale on this ( One of our club guys finished the large Studio Scale size resin kit this spring) its amazing. I think AMT worked off of photos and prduction drawings the model shop had so it was really innaccurate with so little actual refernce.
How do you plan to display the model? Which one are you going fof here with the added plate, the ESB or ROTJ version?
Thank you PatlaborUnit 1 for you kind words… I don’t know why any serious company took the AT-ST and re-issue it better than the AMT one… I found the subject quite attractive for any modeler…
Answering your question… I’ll display it in… sorry you’ll have to keep waiting I wanna it to be a surprise (if you don’t mind) to keep the suspense… jejejejjee… don’t worry as I said in the beggining it is a finished project so you won’t have to wait for me to construct it… I’ll reveale the pictures batch by batch every day in order to keep the step by step as close to reality as possible…
As I said as time passes by I was still founding error that, in my opinion, had to be corrected. In this portion of pictures:
a) detail added to the back of the head, detailling AT-ST’s heat exchange and radiators.
b) replace the frontal shock absorbers by a new scratched ones more realistics including the pinstons and wiring.
c) the claws are badly detailed… with a little effort they can become what the should look like…
Ok, in this batch of pictures I’m back to the cannon and its mount. As you can saw the cannon that comes with the kit has being modified (earlier post) now I’ll focus my attention in the cannon’s mount and the lower part of the head.
First a previos look of the original mount
And the one in the motion picture Return of the Jedi
So I have work to do…
First the mounting`
Then the cannon’s pivoting system matched with the one installed in the cannon
testing the fit between the to mechanism
and some wiring and hydraulics
And finally a view of the result looking now closer to the movie
First of all thanks to Cosmic J and Schweinhund227 to their kind support.
Okidoki… now will start detailling the roof top of the AT-ST’s head. Let’s see the new batch of pictures. Some severe damages were made to the original roof top after I cut it off from the original laydown. So I had to made a new one… only the cooling pannel has being saved.
Some extra detail has being added to the hatch
In the roof there’s a hand railing… guess what the original is too thick… a new one from brass was made.
In this batch we’ll construct the cheeck guns. Of course that the ones supplied doesn’t satisfied my need for realism (and at this point you’ld got realized of that) and in order to finish with a nice writting more scratch has to be done.
The new items are both guns and new basement for each gun.
Now a hole view of the imporvements made… we´re now getting close to the final result…
Wow, just amazing. The amount of work you have put into that thing is insane! (I mean that in a good way.) Is any of that detail on the aftermarket? Or is it all scratch? Keep it up! By the way, cross section books are awesome! I see you were using them too. Just used them on my AMT Falcon when I detailed it about 2 years ago.
Hello Bobafet… thanks for your comments… yes I’m a little bit insane, jejejejeje… no, I don’t think there’s any aftermarket products for this kit. I believe in the old ways of the force (scratching) to get incredible things from old pieces and plain plastic. Indeed the cross-section books are outstanding, also the collection of books called " the art of Star Wars".
LOL! I was gonna use the term “madman” (also in a good way).
Very enjoyable so far. Good camera work too. Those close ups take a lot of the mystery out of your detailing; they sort of explain themselves if you know what I mean. Inspirational too.
Thanks for your support and nice words fellow madmen, jejejejeje… well let’s start finishing this baby by painting and preparing the base. As you’ll see in the next pictures I decided to put my AT-ST in the dark days where the empire had its victory on the freezed plains of hoth.
