Imperial All Terrain Armored Transport

In July of 2004 I was contacted by Master Replicas to provide two Paint Masters for their first Studio Scale model replica, the AT-AT Walker.

They had initially hired an ILM artisan to do the paint masters, but upon receipt of the paint samples, decided to go in a different direction. These first samples were painted "for film" and, though they would look great under bright studio lighting, were "overbearing" as a prop replica.

This was the head before I re-primed it. There was way too much rust-colored wash for my personal tastes/against photo reference.

The airbrushing was a little too-obviously applied for my tastes too. It just didn't look like what ended up "as seen" on film...

So this was reprimed and used for the first of my two Paint Masters.

Here are the parts primed and ready for the base color, which I had mixed to match samples provided.

Since there was no particular "hero" AT-AT, I was given great creative freedom in placing the streaks and blast marks. I took great delight in knowing that every mark I made was to be "canon" in some small way - what a dream come true!!

Here you see the parts all coming together.

The head was partially disassembled, but painted easily enough.

Interestingly, this first AT-AT was supposed to come on a snow base, and have snow on the Walker itself. I applied the snow to match screencaps, per MR's wishes.

This is the raised foot - it was going to look so cool! Sadly, they decided to leave the snow out of the first release. What a shame.

Body completed!

Streaks were applied with powdered pigments as usual.

The bottom plate was made dirtier, as the mechanical under-bits would be dirtier in "real life".

Backs of the legs, ready for snow and final weathering.

Since these were done under such a severe deadline (because of the false start with the ILM-artist-painted AT-AT sample), I wasn't able to assemble and photograph the finished paint masters, but MR used one of them in their photography and literature as seen above.

And here as well, with acrylic lid.

Truly a dream come true, I would soon be painting a Snowspeeder and even revisiting the AT-AT for the "version two". Eventually I will repaint my production sample AT-AT as originally intended - snow and all!