Age and scale problems when setting up doll families

The struggle with this one for me has always been real. But more than the sizing (I am very good at photo manipulation) my ordeal is finding dolls that fit within the same aesthetic realism.

For example, I am currently holding two Minifee girls. I have another one coming home in a couple of months. She will need her big brother — who was supposed to be an FID Claude — but aesthetically, they do not fit together (in my opinion) so I'm presented with a dilemma for my doll family too.

For a 70cm guy... that's a tough one! I am thinking you'll want something around the 50-55cm range because an MSD will indeed look very small next to him. This is an excellent post containing a lot of size comparisons, so check it out — just as a head's up; doll nudity, so maybe NSFW.​

 

When I need to compare doll sizes, this site helps out a lot. Though they do not have all of the dolls out there but you should be able to get some idea. | Comparison Heaven and Dollection blog

 

I use a scale calculator to work out approximate heights.

So if you're using 70cm and that's a character who's not freakishly tall what you want to do is work out the maths to determine what that 70cm is, this is your baseline and the "scale" you'll work off for everything else.

So if you were working in true 1/3 scale, a doll that's 70cm would scale up to 210cm, which is 6ft10!!??
So unless your character is freakishly tall, that's just not gonna work.

2/1 gives you only 4'7 though. So, you need something in between.

2.5/1 gives you about 5 foot 9

2.6/1 gives you a much more reasonable and realistic 5'11 and a half.

So, sticking with 2.6 as your scale you need to scale down. How old is the younger sister? Find out the average height of a girl of that age and plug it into this: Scale Conversion Calculator - Jimbob-Wan's
(the scale down section using 2.6 as your scale. Make sure it's 2.6 and not 26. lol)

For example: the average height for a 12 year old girl is about 4 foot 11. (150cm)
that gives us a measurement of 57.6. So a doll supposed to be that tall alongside a 70cm doll would have to be 57-57cm tall (sd sized)

If you go younger, you're looking at let's say, 10. 143.3cm gives us a measurement of 55cm (really hard to find bodies this size, especially ones that aren't adult)

An 8 year old would be 50cm tall to a 70cm boy.

That's gonna be tricky. So let's redo the maths:

let's say 70 = 6foot
That's 2.62:1

Let's plug in those other numbers:

12 year old would still be 57cm.
It's not a big enough shift.
We need to drop the scale more.

Unless the 70cm boy is really tall, this is going to be next to impossible to get a sister who looks like a kid alongside him. the big babies are too big, everything else is either too small or too mature.
Headache.

Yes, this gets pretty complicated fast. But that's the problem with the doll scales, they don't actually scale properly.

1/4 dolls aren't 1/4 because they look like children in many cases, they're ALL 1/3 scale surely? but even that doesn't scale correctly.
I don't quite understand where these heights came from because they're borked.

Like, okay:

60cm, which is standard sd height is at 1/3 scale: 180cm, which is about 5'11
That's all fine and dandy, means for some very tall girls but not outlandishly so.

now, 47cm in msd scale, 1/4 = 188cm, which is really dang tall. They cannot be 1/4 scale, especially not the baby ones.
42cm in 1/4 = 168cm, which is 168cm, or 5 foot 6. Too tall for a child.

42 in sd scale though is 126cm, or 4 foot 1. Makes much more sense.
47 is 141cm which is 4foot 7 and a half.. ish.
Which is fine for the immature ones alongside a 60cm sd, but the mature ones end up freakishly short. I mean, they look 15-16 yet they're only 4 foot something? that's not right.

This is a real problem I have with the scales, because sd doesn't actually match up to MSD if you use realistic scales, particularly if you're using a taller sd or a mature msd. Mature msds while looking like 15 year olds are still only the same size as the ones who look 10, and that means they're way too short when paired with sd dolls.
It drives me mental.

So as styles have changed but heights haven't, it doesn't make any dang sense. Also, msd dolls aren't 1/4 scale, at all. Even the grown up looking ones have to be a wierd in between scale to actually be realistic heights scaled up.

But yeah, have a play with the scale calculator and also the character height comparison which will show you where a doll will sit alongside another:
Comparing Heights you can either put it in with their heights scaled into human scale, or use the doll measurements. It doesn't make much difference.

Keep a look out, if you can find a slim immature looking head and body in the 55cm range, it could work. But it's gonna be tricky because the scales and styles of the different sizes are so messed up in the first dang place. It drives me insane seriously lol.
(I myself need a 54cm body for a boy to get the scale correct for my last two characters I have to shell. And this is not a thing that appears to exist. ARGHHHH)

 

These resources are great guys!

 

hahaha such a nerd. *bows*

 

Thank you @purple_monkfish for pointing out the math involved! This makes me so happy, because I often see people saying 70cm is adult, MSD is preteen/teen, Lati Yellow is toddler, and I'm thinking...so....as an adult...teenagers come up to my waist? Toddlers should fit in my hand??? Funny because my 16 year old nephew is actually taller than me and I'm an average adult female height! And most two year olds are about half their adult height,not like 1/10 of it. XD I use basically the same method to figure out my own doll families, though sometimes I do have to compromise when there just simply isn't an existing doll in the size I need.


I think the scale of dolls (1/3, 1/4, 1/6) isn't about true doll scale at all, but a simple way of saying "This doll is approximately ___________ the height of an adult person" to help identify how large the doll will look next to a human. On average, about a fraction of a 6' tall person. Hence why 70cm is usually listed as 70cm, Uncle, Hound, etc instead of a fraction.

 

There is a website called bjd comparison Haven on Google that has a ton of dolls you can compare. Maybe you can find one that is a good size to be his sister that way.

 

All the scale resources people have provided are really helpful! I am a bit obsessive about my dolls looking in-scale with each other and was struggling to figure out what height one of my characters should be. I've figured it out!

 

Holy bananas! Though that's super helpful info, thank you oh mathemagician!

I'm having issues with the aesthetic now because I have two very different MSD female dolls ordered and the males I like are all SD. Eep!

 

I've got degrees in literature & languages, not math LOL So all I did was decide my scale was roughly 1 cm = 1 inch. That works & has the blessed joy of being absurdly simple.
As for the height differential between 70cm guys & kids - well, it's the LEGS that make them so tall. So for my DZ Mo (MSD 45 cm) who has the perfect snarky 13 yr old face, I don't photograph him standing next to the big guys cause he looks just way too short. He looks FINE when they are sitting, tho. I've a whole photo shoot of him w/his best pal Kennie (Volks Kanata 56 cm) - now the height difference in those two I've seen with real middle schoolers so they look fine together. They at one point run up to chat w/my Dollmore Nayuta Kenzo - looks great cause he's sitting (driving LOL) in his dune buggy I have a whole range of bodies (talking about heights) - 25 cm, 35 cm, 45 cm, 55 cm, 60 cm - for the kids thru early teens. It's the faces that determine the ages as much as anything. I'm very happy BTW that Dollmore & IH have 35 cm dolls now that work as older grade school kids. Cause kids really vary a lot in size (I mean kids of the same age).
I have to point out one of my biggest annoyances when I read commentary on this subject - HUMANS vary widely in height. Adults can be anywhere from 4'9" to 7'5". I have a 58cm girl who's BF is an IH EID. Guess what? That's TOTALLY believable. Tons of couples have that kind of size difference. Yet people insist that 'oh now, can't do that, different scale'.
Another thing - when all the dolls are in the same scale world (mine is 1:3 for things BTW) then MSDs (ie KIDS) use the same stuff the adults do (unless it's meant to be kiddie sized).

 

aww thanks guys.

Scale drives me insane. as SD dolls have gotten taller none of the others have and it's so frustrating. Also, if you think about it, if immature msd dolls are meant to be kids, shouldn't their props be 1/3 so they look in scale (that is, really big in their hands) because there's not that much stuff in real life that's actually "child sized". And they'd look more correct in a 1/3 chair than a 1/4 one because then they'd actually appear small.

Of course weaponry and instruments tend to be made for the user, so would be scaled correctly, unless they're using someone elses'. *agonises over a 1/6 scale lute and whether they'd actually even exist or she'd have to use an oversized one in this setting* lol.

I love height variation though, just bugs the heck outta me that companies haven't really kept the scales in keeping with one another. Several companies do mature minis, but they're the same height as the baby faced ones and it kinda weirds me out. Much as I like the 40-48cm size, it does make things awkward to then scale anything else with them when the next size up is 60cm.
The only option becomes Souldoll Vitos, as any other 52ish cm doll has a much too small a head to aesthetically tie in but then the vitos don't fit in with souldoll's own other lines, like, a vito against a mature soulkid looks fine, but you introduce one of their sd dolls and the scales totally thrown off. 47cm works well as a teen against a 52cm adult, but a 60cm adult would be gargantuan.

Scaled up to 1/3 1cm becomes 3cm, and that adds up fast. It means a 65cm doll is 15cm taller than a 60cm doll scaled up. That's nearly 6 inches, which is quite a bit. If your 60 doll is supposed to be 5'11, then adding 6 inches to that you get characters who are pretty unnaturally tall very fast. add another 6 to get up to 70cm and you have a character who's just crazy huge.
So you have to shove your scale down to not quite 1/3, though 1/3 props should still work they might just look a bit oddly underscaled for the 70cm dolls. Kinda like how Barbie stuff is not quite in scale because she's not in scale. 1/6 works, but there are some things that aren't quite right because she's freakishly tall for her supposed scale. (horses are too short, guitars are slightly too small in every dimension, that kinda thing)

It's frustrating though because you'd think that as sd dolls have gotten taller (more and more of them are hitting 65cm+ these days) that msd would have changed to match the new scale, particularly the companies who do "mature minis", but they just haven't. And I wouldn't mind so much if the mature minis looked like adults but they don't, they look like teenagers and it presents a real problem if you want a mix of ages represented in a grouping or if your characters have a particularly dramatic height difference.
ideally, we actually do need some 50-55cm range dolls to fill that gap, to be teenagers to the larger sd or adults to the mature msds. Because right now there's a good what, 13cm at least difference between a taller msd (at 47cm) and a shorter sd (at 60) and while you can get a few 58cm girls, there's not much else in that 50 range.
13cm scaled up btw is 39cm or a good 15 inches. It could work, but only if you have a really short teen and a taller adult. My msd dolls? they're actually 42cm for the girls and about 45 for the boys, which makes them just a bit too short to look quite right,unless they're supposed to be short people. (there are people who use msd dolls as halflings/hobbits for taller sd dolls and that works because hobbits are mature looking but the size of a child at about 4 foot. Gnomes are even smaller, they're like 3 foot something.) but if you want humans, it starts looking odd fast.
In order to be in scale, one or the other has the be 50 something cm tall.

Let me see.. about 55 I think, to be scaled to 60 if 60 is 5'11.
You can get a couple of 56cm bodies but they're hard to find and anything smaller than that is pretty much a no go unless you want a doll with more fashion doll proportions (small head) or a vito.
Gosh it's annoying.

Come on companies, give us some nice variety in the 50-59 range! Boys and girls! I desperately need a 54cm boy or two for my own lineup hahaha.

 

Definitely big on the height variation though. The characters i'm shelling range from 5'6 to 6'4 and are all similar ages, Kay's just really short for a grown man hahah. But he SHOULD look weirdly little alongside his much taller brothers.

I love me some height and body shape variation, ooo yes.

I mean, it's not very realistic for everyone to be exactly the same height/build but the biggest thing is the heads need to look "about similar size" (not the same size of course becuase humans heads vary too. Some people have giant noggins and others little tic tac heads hahaha) but you can get away with about a cm either side of your baseline. 5-6, 6-7 and 7-8 look okay together. the 5-6 and 7-8 might look a bit unusual but if the bigger headed doll is taller, your eye adjusts it anyway. It works okay. the human eye forgives a great deal.
But aesthetically heads matching makes a lot of sense, so they look like they're from the same world.

Though i've intentionally messed with this with my D&D crew. The ones from the Planes are all resinsouls, the one Prime is a different company (ot) and so aesthetically he looks different. Not too different, but different enough that he stands out. I decided to do this intentionally so he looked more out of place as he's meant to be the fish out of water.
from an aesthetic perspective it just amused me.

You can totally put msd and sd together provided you're cool with the crazy height differences and I actually have some characters for whom the borked scales would work. My character Eleven is only 4'11 so is crazy tiny, so really would come up to most people's waists.
And that's fine for really short or really tall characters, but the ability to do people who are average height for their age is seriously missing. It used to work okay when msd were all obviously children but as so many more start looking like they're in their mid teens it throws up a problem of super short teenagers, or super tall adults?

 

I know your pain... so... so well. *headdesk*
Trying to find the sort of sharp featured but mature sculpt I need for my twins at a scale that would work with a 55cm or lower body is next to impossible. I keep watching Souldoll, hoping they by some fluke create a vito head that's perfect. lol
This is what I get for having set heights and looks for characters and daring, daring to want them to be ADULTS without being like 70cm tall.
I'm only small myself, I can't handle a doll that's up to my dang hip! lol.

 

4'11" is vertically challenged, not crazy tiny! Ok, I admit it's very short. That's how tall I am, as an adult, and I'm one of the shortest people I know. I'm also a woman, and men tend to be bigger than women, so it would seem even shorter for a man to be my height.

I also have a different problem finding dolls in different heights in scale to each other than most people- my dolls are mature tinies and smaller "children". There aren't that many dolls that scale.