Bricktastic is the biggest and best LEGO event on the UK calendar. Run by the simply indomitable Fairy Bricks team and held in the amazing Manchester Central venue, it brings together the best our community has to offer—and I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

So when your friend, Kevin, says “Would you like to do a set mod of a UCS AT-AT (75313) to go into a display at next year’s Bricktastic?” naturally, you say “Yes!” Well actually your imposter syndrome makes you say, “Are you sure you want me on that? But, sure, I can make it into a Walled Garden if that would suit your plans?” And so it begins.

A Walking Walled Garden

Walled Gardens are my ‘spaceships.’ There are builders to whom everything looks like a spaceship, to others a castle, and to others still a Ferarri. For me, everything looks like a garden; either a plant or infrastructure. I wrote about this in my very first BrickNerd article, and I said I would talk about my Garden MOCs at some stage, but somehow I haven’t yet. (I’m British and it does not come naturally to me to write about my own MOCs; in contrast, sharing nerdiness about creatures and other things feels good!)

My Walled Gardens have a number of things I like to include if there is a suitable spot:

Walls built in dark red 1x1 and 1x2 plate and have buttresses that are topped with neo-classical finials.
Bird boxes or dovecots (or both).
Climbing plants.
“Special” plants in pots, which use the old-school Scala flowers.
A water feature.
A greenhouse with a potting table.
A decking or seating area, preferably with a BBQ in progress.

What I found really interesting was the freedom that doing a set mod gave me. This wasn’t a MOC born solely from my imagination, it had a mostly fixed shape and size and the underlying structure was there, ready and willing to be built upon and tweaked to my whims. I wasn’t trying to manifest a whole vision from my mind where you rose-tintedly project that the design is perfectly resolved, and conveniently ignore any potential pitfalls. The sometimes paralysing perfectionism that brings simply wasn’t there. I leaned into the ridiculousness that became ‘The Imperial Glasshouse and Gardens’ and had fun with it!

My gardens have always been ‘real world’; Hoth (or indeed wherever this particular decommissioned AT-AT ended up) doesn’t suffer from the same parameters.

The Telescope & Observation Deck

The Fungi Farm

The BBQ

The Potting Shed

LEGO plant elements are available in such a beautiful range of colours now, but lots of those colours are not representative of ‘real-world’ plants. The fictional setting of this model gave me the enjoyment of making up plants that happily read as plants, but which would not be found in our reality.

And not working out how the Glasshouse glazing design could be resolved to fully cover the ATAT body? Not a problem, we’re in fictional space; there’s an invisible forcefield! Leaning into the very different parameters in a fictional world was really fun!

Climbing Plants & Hanging Baskets

The Glasshouse

Container Plant

An AT-AT Takes Flight

I spoke to the builders of some of the other amazing AT-ATs that were on display to see how they had approached their modded versions.

First in line was Ed Diment making a cracking job of representing the Fairy Bricks brand.

I asked him what challenges he had had in tuning such a lump of grey into the signature dark purple of the Fairy Bricks logo:

“I was asked to join the AT-AT builders group with a view to making a Fairy Bricks’ themed AT-AT. Since the Fairy Bricks logo is purple and previous Fairy builds have been in this colour, it seemed an obvious choice. The challenge being that the LEGO colour purple has a limited parts palette. In particular, there are very few wedge plates, however, there are a number of slope bricks so the solution was clear in that slopes would have to substitute for wedge plates. This provided some additional challenges in terms of making panels on the outside of the model align; however, by combining slopes with SNOT work to convert back to plates, it was possible to make this work.

There are relatively few curved plate parts in purple, and we didn't have any in stock in any event, so we came up with the solution of both getting around this shortcoming and introducing some of the other Fairy Bricks colours by using bright pink and dark pink parts for some of the rotational joints on the AT-AT. This also gave some nice colour variance to break up the all-purple look of the model.

Whilst the 8x8 radar dish does come in purple it was decided to use pink tiles around a 6x6 dish in order to give the large eyepiece on the head of the AT-AT a more interesting look. The guns under the chin on the head of the model would need to be changed to something else in keeping with the Fairy Bricks theme, and clearly, somewhere in the model would need to be the Fairy wand. Based on previous experience of making a Fairy Bricks set it seemed that the LEGO Clikits range was the obvious solution to finding a mix of different colour and sized star pieces. A quick look on BrickLink found a seller who had a lot of different star-shaped pieces, so a purchase of these resulted in being able to layer up different sizes and styles within each other to form nice large star wands under the chin of the AT-AT.

The final touch was to add wings to the model. These were built with stepped plate to form the shape and the colours involved, then mounted using the larger ball and socket joints before being integrated onto the back of the model. Even at this size the wings tended to be a bit droopy due to their weight, but can be twisted to form a pleasing appearance and completing the model to look very much like a Fairy Bricks AT-AT.”

A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

Comunidade 0937’s entry was “Shaun, the wolf in sheep’s clothing,” by Miguel Reizinho and Romão Santos.

“Our first idea was to approach the AT-AT as if it was kind of a dog. I always loved this image of Darth Vader taking his AT-AT for a walk. So we thought it would be funny posing the AT-AT doing dog things. We were eager to have it do something that would make you smile; we wanted it to be squatting, having a poo. We also figured that adding Jabba The Hutt as the actual poo would be a nice touch.

However, it proved much more difficult than we bargained for. The AT-AT model is very fragile. Making it squat would require changing the inner Technic structure so that the legs/knees could be higher than the body. In the end, it was just too hard to do.

Time ticked by and, in the end, we had only one afternoon to come up with something before we needed to ship the model so it would make it on time for the show.

So we decided on the sheepskin. Romão went ahead with covering the body with fluffy wool and I started modelling the head. We went for a comic look and it just ended up looking like Shaun the Sheep. The half-closed eyes and the tongue sticking out just made it even funnier.

We added some legs (look closely: it has thumbs!), and that was it!

A Moving Mountain

Next up, we have Laura Kelly’s Colossus:

“There are few things in fiction more inspiring than David and Goliath type stories. A small person taking on something larger than life and winning has always captured the imagination. That's the theme that struck me for this project. Luke Skywalker, on foot and armed with his lightsaber and a grappling hook, manages to destroy the massive AT-AT walker threatening the rebel base on Hoth.

This scene reminded me of something else that I loved. A video game called Shadow of the Colossus. The story of a young man armed with a mystical sword who must fight and defeat massive creatures made of stone and animated by the mysterious force inhabiting the land. I have always loved giant monsters and magical creatures and I followed this connecting thread between these two pieces of media.

I wanted to take my AT-AT - a machine made of metal and piloted by people - and transform it into an animal made of stone and covered in patches of grass; like a mountain come to life! Its illuminated eyes hint at the life inside. Machines aren't really my wheelhouse. I love capturing organic shapes, movements and personality! Making something almost organic out of a machine was a big challenge!

The back legs were the biggest headache. The AT-AT has four identical legs but I wanted mine to look more like a quadrupedal animal with back legs that had thick haunches and the bend that comes from the heel not being positioned flat on the ground. The final touch was adding the old ruins of a castle to its back to suggest the massive scale!”

Inside An AT-AT

The next AT-AT had a unique take on what is inside it! Take a look at Stuart and Naomi Crawshaw’s “An ATAT’s AnaTomy.”

Stuart and Naomi told me that there were several challenging aspects to their build. The obvious colours for various organs had quite limited parts palettes, especially the medium nougat large intestine. They had originally wanted to use dark pink for the lungs, but they had to move to magenta instead, and even then, their AT-AT is prone to collapsed lungs because of the minimal connection points available. Naomi recommends thicker thread when using Scala flowers to make a small intestine so that you don’t end up with masses of loose flowers on the floor if it wears out when you’re arranging the guts!

They said it was fun making something organic as that is out of their comfort zone (they are more normally spaceship people!)

Reaching New Heights

Next up, we have Gary Davis’ Giraffe AT-AT.

Gary says he was hit with inspiration when playing with his Granddaughter and her Duplo giraffes. His biggest challenge was balancing the length of the head and neck. As often happens with modding, your plans have to adapt as you progress. The weight and length of the head and neck meant that he had to significantly rework the inside of the AT-AT’s body to make space for holding the neck base and keeping it positioned correctly. There is a definite feel of a skyscraper’s dampening system in the body moving to compensate for any lateral movement in the head and neck.

I love that the parts were available to colour-change the feet to yellow, and I think that the yellow and reddish brown pattern is achieved beautifully. And, despite the restrictions, we get some adorable Duplo giraffes in their on-board storage compartments!

Steampunk on Parade

Next, we have Caz Mockett’s “Steampunk Old Explorers’ Club Transport.”

Caz said that she had been musing for a long time about doing a Steampunk build and that this was the model to try it with. She quickly found that her brick stock included very little reddish brown, so she went to town to fix that. Her years of collecting gold bits specifically for a speculative greebling project, however, set her up perfectly—so shiny! As with most of these modded AT-ATs, Caz did not rework or recolour all of the Technic frame (in some instances, it is impossible to do so as the parts only come in the light bluish grey of the set)—this actually helped her out on her colour scheme. Initially, she had thought she would stick to reddish brown and gold but found that it needed something else and that some grey/silver accents gave it the perfect little lift.

There is so much life in Caz’s model, I just love it; all the old, retired explorers in their moveable Club, giving their captain directions on where to go to find their next adventure!

A Moving Picture Projector

Let’s take a closer look at David Fennell’s Film Projector.

The inspiration for David’s creation came to him once he had the legs and body of the base model built. He says that at that point, he realised that the shape of the model reminded him of a camera/projector. His biggest challenge was choosing which parts of the model to recolour and how to blend that into the original—which he reckons necessitated about 35 separate BrickLink orders in January.

Physically, the hardest part was turning the big motorcycle tyres inside out - which he discovered needed two people! Once that feat was achieved he found that you could comfortably fit 6 smaller tyres inside each to faithfully represent the sprocket’s shape. Moreover, he has made it so that the whole body can rotate on top of the legs.

And as if that wasn’t enough, the sprockets actually turn! For me, the part that really makes it is Luke hanging off the AT-AT’s belly by the recently released camera strap element!

A Dashing Dino

Next, we have Rod Gilles’s dinosaur mech with the coolest ATTidas footwear, and a T-Rex with a joystick and a red button to push—what could be better than that?

Only the increasingly tiny versions following along in their parent’s wake—squee! Might as well enter that little guy in our AdoraBuild contest!

Octan Slow Speeder

Johannes Haimann made a walking rig of sorts:

Johannes gave us the Octan Speeder Bike F1 Team. A beautiful homage to the Model Team trucks of the 1990s.

The Forest For The Trees

Markus Rollbuller created a camouflaged forest walker.

Another homage to a late 1900s theme, Forestmen hideout has the benefit of changing locations while blending in. I particularly love the re-engineered feet with their treehouse firmly rooted to the rocky terrain, complete with some hardy fungi.

And a Hobbit came to say hello, so naturally, a suitable feast was prepared!

Musings On a Collective Set Mod

What a fun collection of mods! All the builders had a group chat going as we built our models. I have always felt that the AFOL community has such a broad range of interests and niches; there is a place for everyone and I really love that. This chat reinforced that for me again. Right at the beginning, without discussion or reference to each other, we chimed in with our initial thoughts on what we were going to make with our AT-ATs, and every single one was different—brilliant!

I’d never recoloured a set before and it was interesting to see the different approaches needed depending on your colour choice. LEGO’s colour/part palette is pretty comprehensive now, but even so, there were parts we either couldn’t or wouldn’t change. I personally am very grateful for the popularity of Iron Man; the dark red palette is all the better for models in his likeness.

Re-colouring also brings boxes/trays of discarded parts and bags of shiny replacement goodies. Now our brick stocks of light bluish grey have swelled considerably!

The parade was stationed straight on as you came into the exhibition hall and was much admired by visitors and exhibitors alike throughout the weekend.

Overall, it was incredibly fun to be part of, and I’m very grateful to have been included. My thanks to everyone for sharing in a genuinely lovely project. Onto the next parade!

How would you mod an AT-AT? Let us know in the comments below.

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