Questions of Scale (1 Viewer)

[Panzer ace]

Scale on toy soldiers is different from scale on AFVs. We have accurate measurements of AFVs and using them can accurately determine the scale of a model of that AFV. Not so with toy soldiers. It's because bigger scale AFVs are proportionately larger in every measure than a smaller scale AFV. If the larger model is 20% longer than the smaller model, then so is the width and height 20% longer. That's not true for people.

I printed out this photo and took some measurements. The big person is 36% taller; his arms are 34% longer. His legs are 55% longer. But his chest is only 20% wider and his face only 18% wider. A 60mm figure is 11% taller than the same figure done in 54mm and so are all the other dimensions including chest width and head size. Peoples body measurements between tall and short people don't vary by the same proportion, but they do vary by the same proportion in figures.

That's why in the photo, even with such a big difference in size, both people look like 1:1 scale. While a 1:35 scale figure looks like a different scale than a 1:28 scale figure and not just a smaller person.

Terry

Terry:

You had me right up to "I printed out this photo and took some measurements." After that everything became a blur.

 

[Harper (aka Spitfrnd)]

That's part of it. The way I would describe it is if you have a figure in 1:32 scale but increase each body part by 10%, you would end up with a figure of approx. 1:28 scale. They would not look compatible. If you wanted a bigger figure in the same 1:32 scale, you would need to increase the height by say 10%, but the arms by more than 10%, the legs by much more than 10%, the chest by less than 10% etc. Then you would have a bigger figure in the same 1:32 scale and they would look OK together. There are anatomical tables that spell out the ratios and ranges of human body parts.

Terry

That is quite correct. Further complicating things is that while there are normal differences in height, weight and girth between individuals in any population, most figure ranges do not reflect such variations. This means that when you add a larger/smaller figure it really sticks out, even if all the proportions are correct, which as you note, they almost never are.