AT-ST stop motion model

The AT-ST from the Empire Strikes Back was not planned to appear in the movie at the first stage. Joe Johnston came with a prototype of a 2-legged walker to George Lucas who found it was a pretty cool design. Tom St-Amand stripped off all the kitparts used on Johnston's proto and machined a metal armature, then reglued all the parts on it. The AT-ST was born.

She was planned to have a longer screening time, unfortunatly the matte background felt and ruined the stop-motion scene between the AT-ST and a snowspeeder. This footage probably still exists...

The kitparts were stripped off the model as the armature was used as prototype for the AT-ST's of the Return of the Jedi. Now only the head (wonky) still exists on a naked, modded, armature. The model was in tour in Japan in the 90's. A very limited and private pics of the model exist, I used them as ref. This very one model was a groupbuild effort, thanks to Allan for the original armature, Quincy for the V2 armature and Jason for the ref pictures.