We’ve seen a number of official LEGO Star Wars AT-ATs over the years, but they’ve all shared one fatal flaw: They’re just not as enormous as the menacing, walking beasts that first strode across the screen in The Empire Strikes Back. Mechanical engineering student Noah has built a properly scaled, 5,000-piece LEGO AT-AT that — at 2 feet tall — towers over minifig Snowtroopers and Hoth Rebel troops alike.

Noah tells The Brothers Brick that it took him about a year to build his AT-AT — a bit longer than it might have taken if he hadn’t been at school.

You can see a walk-around video that Noah posted on his YouTube channel, where he also has in-progress videos showing the internal structure.

We asked Noah whether his schooling in mechanical engineering helped him build such a large model. He tells us that the AT-AT’s head is particularly heavy, causing a moment of force, with the head extending far out from the AT-AT’s main body and affecting its center of gravity, which he solved by integrating Technic beams into the neck.

Noah has also built a rather impressive Hoth scene to showcase his AT-AT, with entrenched Rebel troops futilely attempting to hold back the mighty Imperial AT-AT.

The AT-AT in the photo above obscures one of my favorite features of the scene, a very substantial ion cannon built into the rocky, snowy landscape.

You can see more photos of the AT-AT on Flickr. Noah tells us that he’s working on a large-scale scene from the planet Sullust, so stay tuned!