Raskolnikov

Hrm, I am actually not the best with Bricklink lists or using Rebrickable, since I tend to "window shop" for parts that look useful, then free build. But I think there's definitely more you can do to get the price down. Are all those totals from single stores? I think you have to do a couple different orders to optimize price, and I think Rebrickable has tools that can help with that. If you go to the "buy parts" tab of the Rebrickable page for the AT-AT, it shows a few options. One store has all the parts for $1,136 USD, which is ridiculous. But if you scroll down, you can see that one store has 240 out of 260 lots (i.e., unique pieces) for just $240 USD. Only a few stores carry the Scala dish, so if you buy all the other parts from them you're going to get killed on price on other parts. I heard that it's hard to get all the big hinges from one place, too. But most of the parts should be really common and should end up close to the $.10/piece mark. For example, that one store you linked has the pneumatic T-shaped piece at $.80 CA, and I know you can find them for .03$ USD at some stores. $.23 is steep for a 1x1 plate, too, and since the build has 47 of em that adds up. You can definitely find those for less than $.10 per at other stores. Anyway, I know the loonie has taken a beating recently, but definitely don't pay anywhere close to $1000. Consider international stores, too. Maybe someone better than I am with rebrickable or bricklink can help more.

Awesome picture, LL924! Thanks for sharing. $1000! Jeez. I thought you could get it for like $250 USD (although I guess the $ symbol is used for Canadian, Mexican, and Australian currencies, as well, but still...) perhaps one of the stores you were looking at had something severely overpriced.

Looking forward to it. The more family friendly name seems like a good idea, too, lol. If I had more free time (alas, it seems to be more and more limited), I'd try to do more with YouTube myself. I've always used Windows moviemaker since it's easy and free, although it has very limited options.

A few people were building it in LDD, but I don't know of any finished files. I know the feet would clip in LDD if all four legs are straight -- not sure if that's the reason or if something else is illegal. LDD isn't really in my wheelhouse. In other news, Legolijntje's updated instructions are available for download on the rebrickable page. No major changes, adds 2x2 round tiles to ankles and fixes some of the ambiguities that people have mentioned.

Are the 8x8 dishes painted as well? They look really nice, but I thought the light bluish gray ones were super expensive.

OP concurs!

You're welcome, thanks! I did buy 4 printed dishes and try them out on the first plus-size AT-AT I made, but I decided to go with the plain ones in the end. A less "busy" design seemed to fit the rest of the model better. I do kind of like the 4x4 printed dish on the back left knee, though, with the light bluish gray border around it. If it's not too wide, that looks kind of cool. Back right knee looks OK, too, but I'm not sure what you can do with the top joints that would match it well. Also, 12 6x6 printed dishes is an expensive order, I think. On a side note, I'm not going to be able to stop you guys from bending the knees backwards, am I? Ah well, I tried :) Ouch.

I'm thinking about adding the sand blue as well. I would definitely have done it except I kind of "de-colorized" my AT-STs already. Anyway, can't wait to see a third, you'll be the first with three of 'em. Who knows what trouble they could get into. Also, can't help but notice that you flipped the roof panel :) I know the other side has those loose grilles attached with one stud, but I thought that was necessary for some reason. Can't exactly tell why without being back at my apartment. It certainly looks fine the way you have it, does everything fit OK? They don't really like licensed stuff, though, do they? I'd also feel kinda bad if it got a lot of votes because LEGO really did do a lot of the intellectual work on this. Figuring out the general plan for a model is sometimes the toughest part, and I basically followed their plan but made everything bigger and shinier. Anyway, if they think there's a market out there, I'm sure they'll eventually come out with something similar. Sure, there's a bunch of info. in this thread probably. Most serious issues with the instructions is that a few tiles on the backs of the legs are hard to see, and there might be some cheap technic pins missing -- wouldn't worry about it too much, though. In terms of doing things differently, I might try a totally different construction method for the legs, but that'd be a lot of work. I meant to attach the head side panels better as well, but never got around to it.

Yep, that price is fine

Sounds great ZodiacKiller! (I was going to comment about how it's strange to respond to someone in a cheerful fashion when they're named after a serial killer, but then I remembered that I'm named after a murderer, too...) To answer your question about the ankle mods, there's nothing to worry about. Structurally they're the same as the set and I don't think anyone has changed that. I just lazily used some 1x2 jumper plates on them to add some superficial detail, but it probably looks better to use 2x2 disks or round tiles.

Looks great! Another decent option for improving the ankles, too. Regarding shortening the leg plating, we were just talking about that on page 7 since richiejwalker made the same modification. I'm not personally a fan of ever bending the knees backwards, so I didn't design the legs to be able to do that. I like the walking poses where one or both forward-swept legs have the knee bent but the trailing legs are straight. Richpepperell (what is it with Riches and building AT-ATs?) recently took some nice pics of his modded version in a one-knee-bent pose:

Don't get me wrong, I agree with you there. But I wouldn't have been surprised to see yet another captain/commander rank plaque. If Lucas himself think it's ok for every officer to have the same rank plaque in ROTJ, we can hardly expect TLG to do better. But they were nice enough to add a general in for variety's sake, and I'm quite pleased with that.

Unbelievably happy about the new Imperial torso in the advent calendar -- looks like the rank plaque of General Veers with two code cylinders.

Great mods Richpepperell! I didn't know about that stickered tile..but now I think I need to go buy one. If you want to soup it up more, you could also add a hologram on a 2x2 jumper tile to the left of Veers. I also really like the removable seating -- looks like I left you just barely enough room haha. Most of my troopers have the kama cloth/trench coat, and I like that, but they have trouble sitting down. Your seated troopers on the top level definitely look better, though. Now I'm torn... Me too. The ankles are what bothers me the most about the model, actually. I spent hours trying to come up with a snot version, but there are a lot of issues with that due to the way the rest of the leg is designed. So I eventually said "screw it" and just went with what the set had :) When TLG finally comes out with a 2x2 wedge plate in lbg (maybe my most wanted piece) I'd like to take another crack at them. In other news, a guy on rebrickable managed to cram 31 snowtroopers in his build, and he shared some pics: https://www.flickr.com/photos/151644376@N07/sets/72157679996933875/ Or maybe this link if that one doesn't work, I dunno https://www.flickr.com/gp/151644376@N07/V5664U

The sand blue and dbg additions are really cool, I like that it's a very restrained use of the colors. Bet it looks good next to an AT-ST!

Awesome, I still get a lot of enjoyment out of seeing pics of it in different settings. Glad you liked it! Did you have to modify the "knee-caps" by any chance? I like putting it in a walking pose where the legs that are swept back are straight, while the legs taking steps forward have a bent knee. I'm not sure the knee-caps are designed to cooperate with other poses quite as well. Kinda like this gif, but it's hard to capture exactly:

Resurrected, eh? I don't think it can be built in LDD due to some (fairly harmless, I think) illegal builds. And building it digitally in another program or making instructions would be an enormous amount of work, so I don't see it ever happening. But you know, if someone wanted to pay me a decent white collar salary, with health insurance, so I could quit my job and spend a few months doing it...I suppose I would. Only partly joking, there. Been a while since you asked this, but I know you're still around since you built an AT-AT. I think it'd be pretty hard to get it out to the west coast lol -- I can barely get it out of my apartment. I've only been to Brickfair VA with it so far, might hit that again or another east coast show this year.

Excellent work, looks great all around! Good photography and editing, too. I'm particularly fascinated with what you did at the edges of the panels, where it transitions from wedge plates into tiles. Don't suppose you'd be willing to flip one of those over and show how that connects?

Thanks, those screenshots definitely are helpful. Very clear way of providing feedback, too (I should do it that way myself, in the future). Richpepperell is correct about the 1x3 tiles, and I think someone mentioned them in the Rebrickable comments as well. We'll probably stick with the current version of the instructions for the time being, since there don't seem to be any build-breaking issues. Still good to keep tabs on this stuff, though.

Glad you like it! If you have time to list any specific issues with the instructions, we're always interested in that kind of feedback. Neither of us has actually used the manual to build one ourselves, so we're kind of relying on you guys to do the quality assurance work.

Sounds good, I'd be interested to see how the color swapping turns out.

I'll be damned, you're right. Ep. III suit is very similar to Ep. V and VI, but one of the buttons on the middle panel of the suit definitely is green when it should be blue, a red button switches from right to left, etc. Arg, my shiny new Vader is from the prequels!

That hair looks great on Wolfpack Ezra

If it'd help, I think at least four of the 1x16s would look fine in black -- the ones supporting the hinges/snot panels on the body. There are probably a bunch more color substitutions that can be made without much impact -- I just buy lots of lbg and dbg, so that's what I end up building with even if it's covered up.

This looks great, a vast improvement over the set. I remember looking at Skayen's topic, and it almost convinced me to try something like this myself. The set's proportions were way off, due to the use of the 3x12 wedge plates. 4x2 wedge plates are definitely the way to go. I also thought that it had to be possible to fix the gap or void between the top panels on the set with some careful engineering, and you've done that, too. I also like the decision to have the hypotenuses towards the edges--looks real good the way the tiles contrast with the "city" part of the ship. And I think I understand what you're saying about the difficulty of connecting them -- even as a native English speaker, it's a difficult concept to get across. So if you're building a big gray triangle ship and if the main connection points for your top panels are along the edges of the ship, it's easiest if the hypotenuses of the triangles go down the center line of the ship. That's because it's difficult to connect anything to the hypotenuse side of the panels because the connection points would all be at weird, fractional stud distances. Similar problems occur if you want to have your hypotenuses going down the center line of the ship, but you ALSO want to connect the panels to the center line -- which, oddly enough, is something the design of the 10030 does a lot of, regardless, and is why it uses magnets for those connections. Anyway, whatever solution you've used looks like it's working quite well, although I'd be interested in seeing more detail on how the bottom panels connect.