In a tiny AT-ST factory

The Command Module

Building the AT-ST, All-Terrain Scout Transport, also known as a scout walker among other things, was started from the command module. First a box was installed on top of the turret, then the ingress/egress hatch with its safety railing. After I had the railing properly and firmly attached I had to rebend it straight. It ended up looking battered and beaten up in action!

Next I went on the right cheek and installed the first few armour plates. I really couldn't remember what the basic AT-ST looked like but this one was either a more impressive one (yes) or some sort of a modified, more heavily armored unit - or my earlier (old) AT-STs have just been that much worse on details. The latter may not be too far from the truth, I thought.

After these bits that improved the war machine's overall aesthetics I got to build the right side's gun: a concussion grenade launcher. Forming these round shapes out of flat pieces has always been somewhat challenging. I guess they worked out decently this time.

The instructions had me going around the pod counter-clockwise, so next I added some extra armour plates on the front bit. Somehow it would've been fun if the viewports could've been left open, but that's something we have to leave for a plastic model. Assuming I could find one, that is.

The left side of the command pod went just like the right one, just with a different kind of a boomstick. This hardpoint received a light twin-barreled E-Web blaster cannon. As you can see in the photo the left half was still open on purpose and was going to remain so until the last stages of building.

Hips

Next in the program was the hip setup. Assembling it by the book was a bit silly, as it'd been much easier to first install just about all the bits while the main unit was completely open and uninhibiting. Had I thought of that I'd had easier time with a couple of the pieces. At least I had had the sense to keep it that open...

Of course these were just tiny complaints. The swivel bit that went between the turret and the hip unit was maybe a bit easier to build than the real one (shape-wise, that is). The double-cone was a bit tight in places and tightening the connections didn't succeed perfectly everywhere. I trusted that it'd hold together anyway.

Either I just didn't know what I was doing or there was something odd somewhere, as the attachment band on the right side of the hip forced the thigh bit into a very sharp angle when compared to the one on the right side (which was mirrored in the instructions but not in real life). As far as I could say the rounded bands were all the same, symmetrical and three-spiked and therefore they were not misaligneable. Or that's what I had thought. At this point I was, as to be expected, somewhat sceptical about the right leg's position later on.

The legs

Yeah, I had installed both the right thigh onto the hip and the rear plate of the hip unit not caring that the instructions wanted me to do that a few evenings later. While I was assembling the leg I was really concedned of accidentally bending it so badly that it wouldn't work at all a few steps later.

Either it was because of the temperatures home or in the tiny and flimsy pieces but just to get the right leg built up to the progress shown in the next two photos made my fingers awfully sweaty. I had also managed to leave an obscene amount of fingerprints everywhere, so I absolutely could not avoid a cleanup when all was built.

Reaching the status shown in the next four photos took another 45-ish minutes. I guess it was because all of these tiny subassemblies, they were just incredibly time-consuming. Then again, I think it's been the most detailed MEM model I've built so far. The other (inner) half of the right leg went with the same routine as the first half, so I was confident in being much more efficient with the left leg later on.

Luckily (or skillfully?) the so-far built part of the leg got attached to its thigh without a hitch. The decorative pieces and the extra armour behaved nicely as well. Funnily enough I noticed (or recognized) the ankle-attached tendon piece only after I had attached it to the back of the leg. That's how the context was easy to lose while staring at the details.

Then the other one

After a couple of evenings off I started on the left leg. This time I knew pretty well how it was going to proceed and which pieces I'd be using. With the benefit of experience I got the leg built and attached in less than 45mins. That took way less than half of the time I had spent on the first leg.

Then I did as before, attached armor plates and ankle bits. Of course things couldn't just work but the small box in the tendon piece broke in two as it was bent badly while removing it from the sprue. And the remaining bits naturally fell off thanks to the lack of support. Grumble grumble.

Back to the top

The main gun(s)

Before I could finish the command module I finally was unleashed on the chin gun (a Taim & Bak MS-4 twin blaster cannon)! Despite its slight flimsiness building it was actually lots of fun.

The gun unit was installed hanging from the command pod's slightly bent bottom plate's front end. One of the barrels had got twisted a bit but it did end up looking decent after some restraightening. As long as you didn't look at it straight from the side, of course.

Sealing the backside

The command pod's rear armour plate required a couple of cooling units and whatever they were called in the specs. Especially working on the fan containers I was about to get even greyer hairs, as they were very fragile and needed to be treated very carefully. I mean, just look at them!

My final curses

Apparently these kits just have to have something that just have to require crying and tooth-grinding. In the AT-ST's case that part was when you attach the command pod into its own floor. I admit that at one point I felt like throwing the model out of the window and with all the power I could muster.

After taking a couple of deep breaths and calming down a bit I got it all done. From that moment on the project just couldn't fail anymore by accident. I inserted the walker's ankles into the baseplate and to my great surprise the uninstructed pose didn't end up being problematic at all. That was just nice.

Now that my war machine was standing on its leg stumps I had to attach the foot pads with their toes on the rest. This proved surprisingly complicated as the foot pads had a most peculiar shape. I almost broke off one of the toe units, so flimsy they were. Still, nothing broke anymore and I got all the last bits installed without incidents.

Hey, look at that: it looks like an AT-ST! Now I was content.

Project VIII/16

In the world of the metallic models

Again we're looking at a Metal Earth Models kit. As I bragged earlier this year, I got this AT-ST kit as a birthday gift and to honour that I took it up next before the pitiful remnants of my work queue.

As before, the envelope contained two sheets of pieces and just like with Megatron the instructions were surprisingly long. Maybe these newer sets just have more detailed instructions, not more complicated models? That's at least how I felt: less guessing and more seeing.

This would be lots of fun, doubtlessly! I could only hope in advance that I wouldn't ruin my thumbs totally. Let's suppose I got wiser. But don't bet on it :p

Megatron

It all starts from the legs

Maybe slightly and gently wisened by a couple of MEM kits under my belt, I didn't follow the exact order of the instructions that strictly. That means that I didn't bend all the main components shut but first attached the greebls and whatnot and only then boxed them in. That made things much less aggravating as I had more space (and I didn't need to open the leg bit just to have the space to tighten the seals of the greeblies). And maybe this time I'd remember to triple-check the alignments so I wouldn't have to undo bits misaligned by 90° or 180°.

While assembling the tiny discs on the sides of the knees I managed to draw blood. As the depth of the discs came from a rolled up strip, that when closed had two of those attachment lips poking from both ends. I was holding the two-piece hamburger standing on my thumb, pressing the disc on the cylinder so that I could bend the parts to seal the connection. Maybe I pressed a tiny bit too hard as I got the damn thing into my thumb. Sigh.

Assembling the first leg took just about 40 minutes. The second one took a nice bit less, not that I paid much attention to the clock.

Sometimes the already built pieces took so much space that closing the remaining attachers wasn't as nice and clean as I would have liked to. Mostly I just bent the bits flat, but in a few places I decided that twisting them would make that much of a difference in the connection's tightness (and would not require space that wasn't even available). Wherever I didn't have the space for more than a twist, I had to be very careful not to scratch the neighbouring surfaces while poking around with the tweezers.

The legs that got attached to the hip complex ended up in a very masculine pose on just on their own. I had to bend them shut quite a bit when I was attaching the feet to the baseplate. Nothing squealed or snapped off, so I wasn't concerned for the durability.

Based on the photo below someone could imagine that I was working on a Rifleman BattleMech. But no. And for some reason after this part I was led to work on something completely different.

Gunnery

I got to build Megatron's gun form's barrel now. Rolling up the tube went pretty well even if I said so mayself, it actually looked round. I almost did the barrel's end piece wrong but noticed that it was going inside out, but I noticed in time. The biggest problem was to get the end piece to slide over the whole barrel's lenght without getting caught on all the protrusions along the way.

The torso

In another surprising move the next part was the torso and the head. Megatron's hatholder proved to be quite a lot more complicated than what I had expected. Still, it didn't cause any problems and allowed itself to be built very nicely.

After the head was done I built a support structure for the gun-mode's barrel and installed that one on the right shoulder blade.Then I attached the head itself and finally the whole chest unit on the hips. All this was pretty quick and problem-free.

Gunnery, pt II

At last! The scope of the gun-mode was the awesome arm-mounted cannon of the robot-form. Somehow, being too excited I assume, I managed to do something wrong. That funnel-shaped piece was supposed to have the grooves on the inside, now it wasn't. It was actually quite curious that all the tubes were sealed with solid bits and there were absolutely no surface details on the arm cannon.

I had decided to use my own judgement regarding the instruction's working orders to make my life easier. The instructions suggested, again, that the box would be mostly closed (3/4 pieces bent to their final positions) before attaching the other pieces on the box. That was always so very complicated in a very restricted space, so I've taken the habit of attaching the details first and closing the boxes when all the essentials were done.

The paws

The arm building took a fairly good amount of time, thanks to the greeblies and details. What I had feared the most were the fists but they were just about the easiest part of the arms in the end. Again breaking some patterns the right arm that I built first was much quicker than the second one, most likely because it had less extra bits thanks to the arm-mounted cannon. This way the right arm needed less extra bits than the left, empty one.

Yet again I deviated from the guidelines to keep my own sanity levels high (or at least trying to do so). First I installed the cannon on the right arm and only then did I attach the arm to the torso's side flap, which was obviously closed up last. At least this sounded better and less annoying to me. Installing the left arm was just as quick and easy as the right one. And see, Megatron was completed.

He ended up pretty coo. Nicely I didn't leave many fingerprints, which is mostly due to the textures on the surfaces which didn't grab as much crap as the smooth, flat surfaces. This robot was pretty sizeable, which is something that is much easier to notice with some comparison shots. The traditional half-an-euro coin was there to provide the perspective.

Project VII/16

My long-ago gone birthday had provided me, among other things, a couple of Metal Earth Models sets. The first one was the awesome leader of the Decepticons, Megatron. You may have guessed that I was quite beside myself!

The envelope with its bits

As we've become used to, the envelope contained two sheets of pieces to be bent until my neck got stuck and the air was filled with profanities. Typically a G1 Transformer, Megatron was pretty angular, so I wasn't going to be too frustrated with round shapes. The cover art Megatron was in a pretty silly, zombielike pose, though .I hoped that the left arm could be repositioned a bit at least.

Sea of instructions

This set differed from the Star Wars models by its instructions. There were a total of eight pages of them now! Based on a quick skimming, nothing too weird was to be expected. Good, good.

Finished: Project VI/16

The captain was completed as soon as I had painted the Reichseagle onto the top front of the hat. I didn't go for the stubble after all. As a finishing touch I went over the whole guy with Vallejo's satin varnish and then, after a decent curing time I did the binocular lenses and some splash-like surfaces "beaming" from above with gloss varnish. The result was pretty neat.

Lastly I took a few silly photos of the cap'n on his command tower, observing the seas. The tallness of the edges managed to surprise, as you could see surprisingly little of the guy.

The captainy details

Skin tone issues

I started painting the skinny bits again with a coat of chocolate brown (VMA 70872). On top of that I applied an almost as covering layer of dark flesh (VMC 70927). Finally I painted a bit lighter but still not entirely dry brushful of medium fleshtone (VMC 70860). This recipe had worked just nicely on the Deutsche Afrika Korps guys, so why not again?

I happily gave this guy a white sweater that'd bring some variety on the otherwise dark figure. Generally I used this pic as a reference, because I thought it looked amusing enough. There was no way I could get such an expression done, but one can't have everything.

What sort of a face would I like to show around?

After the skin was done I did the eyeballs with two tiny droplets of white in both eyesockets. Then I dropped an even tinier droplets of non-aryan chocolate brown for the eye colour, managing to achieve a really suspicious look on his face. I also did some buttons on the coat, again looking at the ref pic, using old gold (VMC 80878). Six out of eight got to the photos. There were no other markings to be done on the coat.

Put on your hat, man!

Lastly I attacked his hat. I painted the lip, the brim and did a larger round on the forehead part with black (VMA 71057). The rest I painted white (VMA 71001) to add another layer on top of the white primer. A bit later I scribbled some leaf-like things on the front edge of the visor(?) and a wreathlike thing on the round bit on the front of the hat. In the center of that I attempted to paint the roundel by dropping a drop of white and then its center another, smaller droplet of red (VMA 71085 Ferrari Red). For examples and inspiration I had found this photo.

While I was typing this up I noticed that I had forgotten the Reichseagle from the hat, so I had to add that sooner rather than later. I had also thought that I could maybe attempt to create some sort of a beard's shadow effect on the face, but I wasn't sure if I dared to.