Question of height ?

[judge-minos]

Hi everyone, I am trying to make a scale of heights for my models and run into a bit of a problem,

Basically how tall is the average human in the 40k

I tried to base it on the space marine which is around 78 mm straight, by making him 8 feet (2.44 meters) and scaling down from it.
I get average 54 mm barely 1.70 meter tall, now eisenhorn and some of the earlier models are 56 mm which makes them a little taller but still not more then 1.80 to be generous.

If I make the average 54 mm a 1.80 meters everything blows up and the SM becomes 2.60 meters (8'6") and the kroot 2.50 m without counting the head spikes. Now Kroot are supposed to be approximately half a meter taller then a regular human but this would make him much too tall.

What's your thought on the subject

[Kaled]

Did you do those calculations with 54mm as eye level or top of head?  Because when talking about the scale of miniatures it's usually the former.

[MarcoSkoll]

What's your thought on the subject

My thoughts are models are a bad basis for scaling.

The obvious points are that the 54mm scale is generally a "to the eye" scale, whereas height is normally to the top of the head, and that the models are a "heroic" proportion anyway - being overly bulky , scale is not their greatest virtue.

Myself, I keep to modern heights. The black library novels tend to have characters within what we would consider normal extremes, save those specifically from backgrounds of abnormal height.

[judge-minos]

Did you do those calculations with 54mm as eye level or top of head?  Because when talking about the scale of miniatures it's usually the former.

Thanks, that would explain the original model to be a little taller but most of the later models are 54 mm at the top of the head which make them a little shorter.

I was mostly looking because I have some models from other companies and wanted to see if The difference of heights was acceptable in the average of the 40 millenium.
Mostly for fluff

Thanks again

[Kaled]

I've got plenty of models from other companies and they do vary in height, but then so do ones from the GW range.  Fortunately the Imperium of man is a big place and there's plenty of room for people of differing heights.

In other words - as long as they look good on the table then I don't think it's worth worrying about.  But this is the reason why I don't think people should refer to the height of their characters in their fluff, especially if they haven't yet built the model.  54mm models do vary in height and it's often difficult to tell how tall a particular model, and hence character, is until you have it in your hands and can compare it to other models.  I've seen more than one person state their character is over 6' tall and will be based on the Judge model without realising that the Judge is one of the shorter models in the range.

[N01H3r3]

I tried to base it on the space marine which is around 78 mm straight, by making him 8 feet (2.44 meters) and scaling down from it.

Last I read, Astartes weren't quite that tall - closer to 7'-7'6" in armour. It's their breadth and bulk as much as their height that makes them seem so much bigger than normal people.

[Kaled]

Yep, on one of the podcasts Jervis Johnson and Jes Goodwin joke about how Black Library authors keep making marines taller than they should be.

There aren't many studio sources (rulebooks, codices etc) that give the height of a marine, but the ones I found support the 7' to 7' 6" figure. It's funny, a lot of people say BL novels aren't canonical but still talk about marines being at least 8' or more.

[N01H3r3]

There aren't many studio sources (rulebooks, codices etc) that give the height of a marine, but the ones I found support the 7' to 7' 6" figure. It's funny, a lot of people say BL novels aren't canonical but still talk about marines being at least 8' or more.

I've heard suggestions that part of that is due to a lack of familiarity with Metric - canonically, all measurements used by the Imperium are presented in Metric, which is a hindrance for many authors not familiar with it, who tend to assume that 1 metre = 1 yard... needless to say, this results in characters getting taller, as a 6' tall human gains 7 inches of height when described as 2m tall.

[InquisitorHeidfeld]

The first factor to consider is that Citadel doesn't use 28mm or 54mm scale but 28mm/54mm Heroic.
As others have pointed out this means that the scale is measured from eye level rather than the top of the head.
Noting the difference and (perhaps more importantly) the name makes it significantly easier to judge what you might get from other mini companies.

Citadel also morph their proportions more than most - making hands and Heads in particular significantly larger than scale (and though this is by no means as pronounced in 54mm Herioc as in 28mm Heroic it also influences the height)

Finally, as N01H3r3 suggests, an inability to multiply 72 by 25.4 is also a factor. Abnett was the first I was particularly aware of this with - "Gaunt needs to be tall, say 6'4"... so that's well over two meters right?... Bragg needs to be taller than Gaunt, we'll make him two and a half meters, that's got to be nearly seven feet..."