Hi Duncanator! To be honest, we've always wanted to have our AT-AT. The old AMT model was short in terms of measures and details. The ATATRON, which is, in our opinion, the best ATAT replica, is impossible to find out the original, and the recasts use to come in very bad conditions.
Master Replicas offered us the best replica but... who can actually afford a 2500 $ ATAT?? We had access to a SMT model and we simply loved the scale, because it matches perfectly with Fine Molds Snowspeeders as well as with some Anigrand ships. So we went for it. In our opinion, the SMT model lacked so many details too so, tired of looking for an appropiate AT-AT, we decided to build it from scratch.
The fact is that we had no idea about the hell of a work this were going to be: tons of hours comparing the scale model pics, 3D designing some other pieces such as the belly (in the scale model most of the belly parts have been taken from a Harrier 1/24 and a Saturn V 1/144) and lots of research job.
This is our first adventure in the area, if we would have known this issues before, may be we'd have built a scale model. But we took it as it came. If you look closer to the pics, you'd find out some kits we've used. Some of them were used for the original scale model but some other didn't fit well because the 1/48 is simply a bit smaller, so we had to replicate them.
In our ATAT the are like 97 pieces used for the ILM original model. Sorry for this loooong explanation, but hope it has helped to satisfy your curiosity
I'm curious why you chose to make it in 1/48th scale. Sorry if I missed the explanation if it's in an earlier post.
It seems like you made it more challenging for yourselves to have to scratch build all the parts rather than just using kit parts.
I figure you must have had a reason. Are you displaying it with something else?
Maybe a good companion piece for Fine molds 1/48 Snowspeeder?