AT-ST

Here is a diorama, depicting a single moment of the Battle on Hoth. While a small group of imperial troopers, alongside with an All-Terain Scout Transport (AT-ST) were on their way to reach the  Echo-base from the side, opposite to the south gates (where the main hangar cave entrance and the shield generator lie), make a diversion on the base’s reserve power support system, and then rejoin the main attacking forces, if possible, they faced two rebel soldiers on patrol, and engaged the fight. Being heavily outnumbered, and having no hope to win, especially facing such a terrible enemy for an infantryman as  AT-ST, rebells send an encrypted transmission to the base, calling for reinforcements, and, with only a slight element of surprise on their sight, they  prepare themselves  to fight for death, taking as many imperials with them as they can.

BUILDING

First of all, it is very important to notice, that during the Original Trilogy filming their were two different AT-ST models versions: an ESB and a ROTJ ones, that had slight differences. The ESB version featured sealed viewports and longer legs. There is also a small emblem on each side of the head that does not appear on the ROTJ AT-STs, that I’ve tried to depict. Concerning the first two issues, I can say, that 1- nobody has forbidden the pilots to open the viewports when they decide two (I really wanted to show them opened) and 2- as I’ve been using the gaming miniatures from WotC as the figures for this diorama, and they’ve come to be smaller in their scale than the AT-ST model, it’s possible to say that in relative measurements this walker is high enough to make his way on Hoth with full rights.

Now, here is a list of modifications I  have provided for the MPC’s AT-ST kit to give it more accuracy:

– on the head I’ve made  a handrail around the top hatch, using some styrene pieces (for the supports) and wire.

– then I’ve cut the viewports, made the  resulting holes more accurate with a dremel  and ‘lifted’ the wiewport’s hatches. Then I provided the opened hatches with two supports (closer to the “nose”), made from ware to.

– drilled out holes for the two hexagonal exhaust ports at the rear end of the body. Then glued extra plastic sheets behind to close off the holes.

– between the two exhaust ports I’ve placed that strangely shaped service hatch that needed to be built from sheet plastic. It looks like an ‘L’ that has been mirror imaged and then turned 45degrees sideways.

– there are three visible cables at the chest area of the body on the studio miniature. I made these from a few lengths of twist ties, but I believe solder will work as well. I drilled the mounting points, and then superglued the twist ties into the body, bending them into the correct shape.

Painting the model was all-in-all rather simple, except that I  had to make some extra preshading, to highlight certain areas in order to achieve proper “depth” in model’s small scale.

Concerning the dioramas base, it has been for me a some kind of a testing ground, where I could train to “create snow”, before proceeding with my Snowspeeder’s takeoff from the Echo-base diorama. After deciding, where to place all the characters and the model itself, I’ve given the EPS piece I was going to use the shape I required, than colored it all black, again in order to give depth to all those “holes” and “cracks” in the snow (as I’ve found lately such a heavy coloring was not necessary, slight preshading of certain areas would have been enough). After that, I’ve sprayed it all gloss-white, and glued a heavy-heavy coat of baking soda upon (for an “outdoor” environment I’ve needed some cool snowdrifts=)). Finally, after giving all that cake some time to dry, I’ve sprayed gloss-white over it again, in order to get rid of some yellowness, provided by the glue, and after doing that covered the base with a layer of Future here and there, to make the snow “shine under the grim Hoth’s sun”

Here are some pics of the base’s building process:

~ by dbernt on 27/10/2010.