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Subject: 
Re: Minifig scale?
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.general
Date: 
Tue, 16 Jan 2001 16:18:32 GMT
Viewed: 
599 times
  
In lugnet.general, Jeff Jardine writes:
I think the concept of "Minifig scale" is a little weird.obble toys.
...
I guess I have two points:
1) Minifigs are lego-ish representations of humanoids, and it does not make
sense to use their height as *the* standard for minifig-scale building.
With this in mind, I think it's impossible to say a minifig scale dump truck
should be 23.5 (or some other specific number) of studs high.  There has to
be a degree of flexibility in minifig scale.

Quite agreed. Only if someone has expressed their 'minifig scale' can you
say that their model does not comply with their own assumed scale... And, as
noted before, minifigs are NOT human-shaped. If they were, they'd either be
tall and fat (not to mention rather squareish), or pretty short (and still
squareish). However, I do generally go by height, only because it 'seems'
right to me. If some other measurement 'seems' right to you, go ahead and
use it :)

2) Because of the size of studs, the length/width dimensions are more
constraining than in height.  So, in my opinion, it makes more sense to peg
minifig width to human width rather than minifig height to human height.  Or
better yet, somewhere in between.

Ok, it's really tough for me to measure my own width front-to-back, but I
get about 8-10 inches. Side-to-side I get about 12 inches. And, yes, I'm
thin. Maybe average front-to-back is about 10-12 inches? I dunno, that's a
stab in the dark... and maybe 'average' side to side is roughly 13-17
inches? That's another yet another stab in the dark...

So going by the front-to-back measurement, it'd make minifig scale roughly
8.7mm = 1 minifig scale foot, making minifigs 11 inches front-to-back, 22
inches side to side, and 4.8 feet tall (about 4 feet, 9 and 3/4 inches).

Going by the side-to-side measurement:
12.8mm = 1 minifig scale foot, making minifigs 7.5 inches front-to-back, 15
inches wide, and 3.3 feet tall (about 3 feet, 3 1/4 inches)

Going by average height (I checked the Boston Science Museum on my last
visit there this weekend, being that I happened to see it... 'average'
height for 20-30 year olds where both males and females overlapped was about
66 inches.) That makes for:
7.6mm = 1 minifig scale foot, making minifigs a little over 1 foot
front-to-back, about 2 feet, 1 inch from side to side, and 66 inches tall (5
feet, 6 inches)

Now, I'm a nerd. Who also either:
A. Cares WAY too much about this or
B. Has way too much time on his hands
or both. Actually, I don't think there's any question about it...

ANYWAY... I made a little spreadsheet, which gives the total percentage
error, and tested different values for minifig foot length from 7.0mm per
minifig foot to 13.0mm per minifig foot.

And for curiosity's sake:
Total percentage error for 7.6mm = 0.837 (about 28% avg)
Total percentage error for 8.7mm = 0.597 (about 20% avg)
Total percentage error for 12.8mm = 0.722 (about 24% avg)

And the best all around error was at 8.8mm per 1 minifig foot, with total of
0.595, still about 20% avg error.

That would mean minifigs are about:
10.9 inches front-to-back
21.8 inches side-to-side
57.3 inches tall

In conclusion, a more suitable "minifig scale" would be:
1 minifig height = 4 ± 1 feet.
Of course this is strictly a statement of my opinion, NOT a criticism of all
the models out there built to the 1 minifig height = 6 feet scale, which are
almost entirely better than anything I can build.

Personally, I'll probably stick with scale based off of height, but that's
just me.....

DaveE



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: Minifig scale?
 
(...) Ok, so I DO have too much time on my hands: According to a couple images found online (Actually, they reported avg human height at 66" too, so I feel rather vindicated in that at least), "average" human width (not that it MEANS anything) is (...) (23 years ago, 16-Jan-01, to lugnet.general)

Message is in Reply To:
  Minifig scale?
 
I think the concept of "Minifig scale" is a little weird. Making complaints about scale of a model that is supposed to be built to "minifig scale" is akin to complaining about the scale of those old weeble-wobble toys. Imagine someone saying this: (...) (23 years ago, 15-Jan-01, to lugnet.general)

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