I never expect to get model kits (or model kit supplies) as gifts, but I’m on a roll lately. Now it seems as if everyone in my family wants to encourage my
Another, different set of of modeling compounds:
And lastly, another Star Wars kit, one that I must admit came entirely out of left field:
This is the AT-M6 as featured in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. It is pretty much the successor to the original, old school AT-AT. I actually forgot about this thing, as I have generally tried to block the film from my mind. But hey, you won’t see me turning down a kit. Let’s get started.
Four small but packed runners. This has a higher piece count than I anticipated. I initially assumed this might imply some interesting articulation, but well read on.
This was a tricky one to paint. The box makes it look extremely dark grey, in which case the plastic looks pretty close to color accurate. However, the instructions printed on the inside of the box say it is more of a standard grey with a bit of black mixed in. That is much closer to the color of the AT-AT, so that’s the direction I went. You can see the new color here:
This was a perfect little kit with which to practice with the weathering compound. An AT walker should not look downright grimy, but it should not look as pristine as a death star either. Here is some weathering and detailing on what will eventually become the bottom of the walker:
When it came to the sides of the model, I got a little bit more experimental. I tried layering some of the compounds on top of one another to see what kind of effects I could get. I knew it might lead to less than desireable results, this was not exactly a kit I would describe as dear to my heart, so it was by far the best candidate for experimentation.
You can see the results below. I got a hell of a shine on both of them.
Sidenote - the panel lines are pretty bad on the one half. Turns out you can panel line on top of paint without clogging the marker, so long as you wait for the paint to dry completely. Only problem is if you screw it up, there is no turning back.
The last bit of major detailing on this kit is found on the feet. In The Last Jedi, the AT-M6’s attack the planet Crait, which has a surface made of red soil, atop which a layer of white salt rests. I wanted to simulate these conditions by painting a the feet wtih a crust of red and white gunk. The results were so-so:
I should have waited for one layer of paint to fully dry before applying the next. The weathering just barely avoids completely mixing into pink.
And with that, we put it all together:
There are three separate things to analyze here - my work on the kit, the quality of the kit, and the quality of the AT-M6’s visual design.
My Work
It’s not the best, but also not ruinous. The panel lining is a bit awful on one side, but the weathering worked well. Even my experiments with the weathering compound do not feel out of place.
Quality of the Kit
The kit is plenty detailed, especially for its size. The articulation, however, is not nearly as good as I assumed. The legs pivot at the point where they attach to the body, but the other two joints remain locked in place. The head has a decent amount of range, and really that is the most important thing. If a Star Wars walker cannot move its head, it is next to worthless.
Visual Design
The AT-M6 is emblematic of the entire Star Wars sequel trilogy - an imitation of the original that makes a few tweaks not in the name of improvement, but simply in the name of making things just different enough to justify its existence as a separate entity.
The idea of the AT-M6 is basically “what if we took the AT-AT and make it look more like an animal? Specifically an … ape?” You can see it first in the feet - the front feet are shaped to look like hands, and bent to give the impression of dragging itself along on its knuckles:
Next, there is the shape of the body. The AT-M6 tapers down in the back at an extremely steep angle:
Which reminds me of this:
For reference, here is the side view of the AT-AT:
The problem with the animal theme is threefold. Firstly, it is not immediately obvious what benefits the more animalistic design offers. Secondly, it does not make sense to model the walker on an animal that probably does not exist in the Star Wars galaxy. Thirdly, why would you model a big, heavy, slow moving walker on an animal that can move up to 25 miles per hour?
It gets even worse. You might be wondering why the sequel to the AT-AT is called the AT-M6. AT-AT is an acronym, just like AT-ST and AT-PT. There is no way that AT-M6 can be an acronym for anything.
The answer is that the ‘M6’ part is in reference to the M6-class turbolaser that rests above the walker’s head:
This gun is - to use a phrase the kid’s say nowadays - a bit too extra. We saw what the standard AT-AT guns can do to ground forces in The Empire Strikes Back. Do we really need a cannon fit for a Starship on there as well? Not only that, but it looks like some shitty ray gun from a 1950’s sci-fi serial. I know that George Lucas used such serials as inspiration for Star Wars, but he never meant to rip them off whole hog. I think gun is unnecessary, though it is sadly appropriate and thematic within the sequel trilogy.
Also, what the hell are these things on the back?
I’m pretty sure Rey shoots some of these in Last Jedi and it causes one of the walker’s to go down. Are we implying that they expose a weak spot? Is the First Order really that dense?
I have spent far too long bashing this walker, so at least let me say one nice thing about it. I like the design of the head. It makes it look as if it has fangs or something, and I believe they genuinely increase the intimidation factor.
Conclusion
Here is the most important thing to understand - all of my complaints about the visual design do not matter. At the end of the day, if you look at this thing from far enough away, it looks close enough to an AT-AT. Furthermore, personally, my eyes tend to be drawn to the head. That means that the specific design and structure of things like the feet or the canon become invisible to me. Out of the corner of my eye I may notice the red and white color of the feet, but I will not be taking stock of all the little details.
Plus, at the end of the day, pictures like this somehow manage to convey a strong sense of personality.
The AT-M6 is not a piece of Star Wars hardware that I am fond of, but somehow this model makes it work. I will be happy to put it on my shelf.
Other Thoughts
- I got a few more tools as gifts, but I had a nice bit of symmetry going on in the intro to this post, and I did not want to ruin it. First off, I got a tiny vice, which I have already used to hold pieces in place after gluing them:
Then there were these “Fine” and “Super Fine” hobby brushes. Just what makes them different? I have yet to find out:
