When I'm trying to figure out one of my dolls' 'human' height, I always work backwards from the doll's actual height to see how tall he or she would be in real life. For instance, if I wanted to see how tall Beau, my Limhwa Mono, would be if he were a real-life man, I'd do this: 44.5cm (Beau's actual height) X 4 = 178cm (or about 71.2 inches - slightly under six feet) Rommie, my ResinSoul Ya, would be shorter at 41cm. Her height calculation would be: 41cm X 4 = 164cm (or about 5'6") For a 1/3 size doll, such as my Elfdoll K, I'd do this: 65cm (Paul's actual height) x 3 = 195cm (or about 6'6") - apparently he's a giant O.o. Obviously, this is just an estimate. Who knows what 'real' height companies actually use to scale their dolls. This might give you a general idea, though. Hope it helps!
Thanks! It works for 1/6 scale dolls too. 26cm X 6 = 152cm (or about 5'2") If you measure the doll's proportions, you can also get an idea of their scale. You can do the same calculation for arm length, inseam length, waist size, etc. and see how long or big around they'd be if they had 'human' measurments.
It really is a fantastic idea. The scale thing is really cool too; I might draw the outline of my dolls' human sizes out on a big piece of paper sometime for fun The doll in your avatar looks great by the way - lovely unusual wig choice, it suits his face so well
It kind of depends on the doll. Take 1/4 dolls, for example: Volks' good old MSDs are intended to be 6- to 8-year-olds or so, while slim minis like unoas, minifees and so on are supposed to be adults (and have the curves to prove it), even when they all are 42-44cm high. (Edit to add: and, of course, Volks' SDCute and the new SDMidi are slimmer 1/4 dolls that look older than MSDs at the same height) Same goes for 1/3 dolls: SD10/SD13 dolls are intended to be, well, 10 or 13 years old. More recent body sculpts put adults in the 60cm range. As for 1/6s, you have Iplehouse's BIDs that look like realistic 2-year-old toddlers and Sugarble's dolls with breasts, who are more like chibi adults. So, yeah...
Not to mention the fact that many dolls just have the weirdest proportions. Height is only one aspect. You can't, for example, reduce a pattern for human clothes to 1/3 scale and expect it to fit. I mean, you can expect it, but it won't fit. (That is one of my greatest dollie-clothesmaking frustrations :P.)
When making props for specific dolls, I generally work in reverse to figure out what a doll's true scale is, I don't assume that it's going to be exactly 1/3 or 1/4. I measure the doll and divide her actual height by how tall I would expect her to be in real life, based on her apparent age, proportions, etc. For example, my JID Isar is 43cm tall. In real life, I'd expect a girl who looks like her to be roughly in the neighborhood of 5'4" or 163cm, which divided by 43 equates to a scale of 1:3.8. Now, for her specifically, she's close enough to the nominal 1:4 scale that props made 1/4 or life size would be fine, but if you have a doll that is not that close to a standard ratio, you can use this reverse guessing method to size their props. Once you've worked out the doll's apparent scale, you can divide that into the dimensions of real world items to figure out how big the scaled versions should be.
