What Exactly is Minifig Scale?

[icm]

I just use the simple rule that 1 foot = 1 stud.  It's not very scientific but it's close enough for me when building airplanes and spaceships.  I've tried building cars to that scale but I'm never satisfied with the results, because it's important to me that a minifig fits inside while sitting upright.  Eventually I just gave up on building cars ....

[MAB]

18 minutes ago, icm said:

I just use the simple rule that 1 foot = 1 stud.  It's not very scientific but it's close enough for me when building airplanes and spaceships.  I've tried building cars to that scale but I'm never satisfied with the results, because it's important to me that a minifig fits inside while sitting upright.  Eventually I just gave up on building cars ....

That is why you need some artistic license when it comes to cars. For example, the small car / Emmet's Smart Car, works quite well but only because it fits just one person. Whereas if you wanted two people sitting side by side, it would be wider than it is long.

[KotZ]

30 minutes ago, MAB said:

That is why you need some artistic license when it comes to cars. For example, the small car / Emmet's Smart Car, works quite well but only because it fits just one person. Whereas if you wanted two people sitting side by side, it would be wider than it is long.

Two person by the side and extend the length and you have a prius!

[Ron Dayes]

On 9/19/2019 at 9:15 AM, BrickG said:

If you can't fit the minifigure in the car it ain't a car.  You basically have to go microfiture scale to get a car that would be the right size for the height. Cars aren't very tall and would probably be up to a minifigure's shoulders or mouth. Good luck making a car make sense in a minifigure world if nothing can fit inside of it :P.  GOTTA go by width. There is no other way. FITTING inside vehicles and other things takes priority.

I DECLARE THAT MINIFIGURES ARE SHORT AND FAT! VERY SHORT! VERY FAT!

 

(I'm feeling rambunctious)

"if you cant fit the minfigure in the car it ain't a car?"

Thats a very vague and somewhat untrue statement, dont you think? So the Tiny Turbo or "disney cars" series arent cars? A large creator car fits a minfig, if not 50 of them if its the technic porsche - so that is definately a car, right?

" you basically have to go microfigure scale to ge a car..." - hey man, you are almost correct. But truth be told, a car in a scale that doesnt fit minfigs inside, IS the official minifig scale! 1/42 to 1/50 is the scale range, pinpointed at 1/43 by my calculations. Even TLG confirmed it. A car is as tall as a figs shoulders, correct obversvation again!

Pls give this Scale analysis i did a go, im quite sure it shows the issue in every detail

Now i think you meant " a car that doesnt fit a minfig isnt a minfig scale car!", right?
Well, no, its still in scale - fitting a fig is a play feature, totally unecessary for the scale itself. Actually, if you read my write up (better quality on flickr), TLG really struggled with that
issue. They chose to improve Play feature and gave up on the scaling idea to some extend.

Saying that the minfig is fat, very true in any height they have. But that its short? Originally, no - everything in LEGO (building windows, doors, motorcycle moulds...) is calculated by height,
~ 180 cm real life, north european male = denmark, 1978, where lego is from...

You can re-interpret your figs scale relation, say its short. But that is not what TLG thought it to be. It will only lead to sacrifcing a correct scale for play value.
You can do that, but saying "that is minifig scale" or "if it fits in, its automatically minifig scale" is simply wrong, mathmatically speaking. There is a scale for minfigs,
it just so happens that its not very "toy" friendly when it come to cars, because there are no small parts small enough to get detail AND playability working together, also the minifig is missing critical joints that would help solve the issue ...
 

[Cavannus]

The minifig scale is basically the same scale as many, many drawings and other pictural representations. This is a scale on which humans are bigger than buildings, vehicles, trees, etc. around them, so that you can easily recognize the humains as well as the part of the environment the author want you to see. This is a somewhat "instinctive" scale.

Even children use a "minifig scale" in their drawings.  

So, as long as a Lego creation uses this very common "representation" scale that could be translated into a drawing or a cartoon, then this is a minifig scale.

Minifig scale: soldiers are clearly bigger than they should be compared to the castle, but "it works".

Same scale here. And a side of the cathedral is open so that you can see the inside (like some Lego sets!!).

Another modern example of similar scale.

Consider that this scale is "instinctive".

Edited September 25, 2019 by Cavannus

[BrickG]

On 9/25/2019 at 3:39 AM, Cavannus said:

Consider that this scale is "instinctive".

But the proportions and accuracy are horrible wrong. Look at those people. Do they have no bodies? They seem to have shoulders that immediately turn into really long legs. And the sun has a SMILE. The sun isn't sentient! What kind of terrible artist drew this!?

Are you suggesting we get minifigures that look like:

IS THIS WHAT YOU WANT!? 

[Exetrius]

On 9/25/2019 at 4:39 AM, Cavannus said:

The minifig scale is basically the same scale as many, many drawings and other pictural representations. This is a scale on which humans are bigger than buildings, vehicles, trees, etc. around them, so that you can easily recognize the humains as well as the part of the environment the author want you to see. This is a somewhat "instinctive" scale.

This is a very interesting way of looking at it! Even in the MOC community, castle builds especially often suffer from dwarfism. 

[lego the hutt]

Many people here seem to not know what system scale is...

[Ron Dayes]

12 hours ago, Exetrius said:

This is a very interesting way of looking at it! Even in the MOC community, castle builds especially often suffer from dwarfism. 

But i think that is mainly because a real bricks castle needs a HUGE amount of bricks, even though they know it should be bigger, but dont have the money to do so...i mean, who really has?

11 hours ago, lego the hutt said:

Many people here seem to not know what system scale is...

Ok? how about you enlighten us then.....what is sytem scale?

[lego the hutt]

15 hours ago, Ron Dayes said:

 

Ok? how about you enlighten us then.....what is sytem scale?

Ill take the bait.  System scale is what some here are describing as minifig scale.

Even though this is a slightly old thread, this has been discussed to death well before this thread was created. 

This has been covered on multiple forums.  I know there was a lengthy discussion 10ish? years ago on FBTB.  I'm sure it wouldn't be to difficult to dig up old discussions if someone is interested.  

From my experience, people who collect figures and statues understand the "scale discussion" better because it is standardized in those hobbies and It is a constant topic of discussion. 

It seems like there is always a lot of confusion in the Lego community partly because Lego sets are not built to an exact scale, but also because the scale of Lego is generally not considered as important as it is elsewhere.  

Edited September 29, 2019 by lego the hutt

[Aanchir]

On 9/28/2019 at 3:20 AM, Exetrius said:

This is a very interesting way of looking at it! Even in the MOC community, castle builds especially often suffer from dwarfism. 

I definitely get the feeling that efficiency is a motivating factor for some of the scale oddities in LEGO. With buildings, castles, and ships in particular, a major goal often seems to be diminishing repetition. Even if bathrooms and bedrooms have become more common in sets lately (and yet still far from standard in buildings that realistically should have them), hardly any sets include more than one, not even buildings that really ought to have several like schools, hospitals, or hotels!

 

Most LEGO locomotives from the pre-minifigure era all the way to modern LEGO City only pull two to four carriages as packaged. Why bother? Not only would that add more weight for any motors to pull, but a lot of real-life passenger and freight trains have several identical or near-identical cars that wouldn't offer a very surprising or varied building experience. Plus, in this case, buyers can simply buy multiples of the same set to add additional length to their trains, not to mention add more length in track to accommodate them!

And as grateful as I am that LEGO City commercial jets are big enough to allow an aisle that passengers and flight attendants can use (as opposed to Town jets which often required everybody to board by hinging open the entire top and side of the plane), the interiors are generally only one or two seats wide, whereas real wide-body aircraft can reach as high as nine or ten seats wide! But what benefit would that have in a minifig-scale playset? Even if LEGO could afford to make their planes that big and customers could afford to buy them, there's no way that the set could be kept affordable if it contained enough minifigure passengers not to leave a plane that size looking nearly empty!

 

In a less modern-day example, real-life warships and pirate ships would frequently have multiple rows of cannons, but Metalbeard's Sea Cow is the only LEGO ship I can think of that even attempts the appearance of this — not even the USS Constellation set, which predated the minifigure, bothered including more than one row of cannons!

Likewise, in the second castle illustration above, it feels almost like the illustrator squished down the distance between the top of the gate and the top of the wall, because that was space that they simply didn't need. This speaks to a lot of the overall philosophy in a lot of these sorts of models. Scale down or diminish in number those parts of the model that would be either be repetitive to build and play with, or would cramp/close off other playable spaces.

Seeing those images above and thinking about scale in this respect, I can't help but be reminded of how content-aware scaling works in web design or image editing. Detail is preserved but any big spaces between the discernable details are trimmed down as needed.

 

But I've long recognized that this is a considerable factor in why some LEGO Friends sets seem to be a much larger scale than their Town or City equivalents, despite the size of the figures being fairly similar. For example, 41015 Dolphin Cruiser appears to represent about the same class of vessel as the beloved 4011 Cabin Cruiser from my own childhood, bit is much larger not because of the figure proportions, but because there is a much greater emphasis on interior detail than most Town or City boats and ships. Likewise, 41311 Heartlake Pizzeria has a much larger overall floor plan than the classic 6350 Pizza to Go or the more modern pizzeria in 60026 Town Square.

That quirk speaks to another consideration in terms of how much a subject's scale can be reduced for minifigures — how many details will the buyer or customer actually care about if they're not there? It's quite possible a lot of City fans would much rather pay $30 for a sparsely furnished cabin cruiser than $70 for one with a fully equipped living space. Or that they might rather pay $120 for a coast guard ship and headquarters packaged together than pay $60 for a more detailed rescue center and $90 for a more detailed rescue boat, as in this year's LEGO Friends Sea Life Rescue range.

 

And that doesn't pertain only to girl-oriented vs. boy-oriented sets; not by a longshot. Castles in story-driven themes — both licensed ones like Harry Potter or Disney and non-licensed ones like Nexo Knights or Elves — tend to have a much greater emphasis on details like places to eat, sleep, train, and bathe than in more traditional, open-ended themes like Castle and Kingdoms.

I suspect that having named figures with established personalities, interests, and motivations helps humanize them enough that kids have a greater interest in role-playing parts of their lives outside of armed combat. On the other hand, when the figures merely represent generic archetypes like "king", "knight", or "soldier", kids tend to focus more strictly on the scenarios and scenes they most closely associate with those archetypes, like a throne room, a siege, or a dungeon escape, and the other parts of life in that setting fall by the wayside.

[The Brick Boss]

I personally would call anything that can host a minifigure, minifig scale. 

[MAB]

6 hours ago, pooda said:

I personally would call anything that can host a minifigure, minifig scale. 

Me too. If a minifigure fits in it or can interact with it in a sensible way, then it is minifigure scale. Of course, different people may see the same build in different ways.

But that is a problem with the question - there is no exact definition of minifigure scale, so there is no correct answer that will please everyone.

[Ron Dayes]

23 hours ago, lego the hutt said:

Ill take the bait.  System scale is what some here are describing as minifig scale.

Even though this is a slightly old thread, this has been discussed to death well before this thread was created. 

This has been covered on multiple forums.  I know there was a lengthy discussion 10ish? years ago on FBTB.  I'm sure it wouldn't be to difficult to dig up old discussions if someone is interested.  

From my experience, people who collect figures and statues understand the "scale discussion" better because it is standardized in those hobbies and It is a constant topic of discussion. 

It seems like there is always a lot of confusion in the Lego community partly because Lego sets are not built to an exact scale, but also because the scale of Lego is generally not considered as important as it is elsewhere.  

well, i was hoping you'd guide us there. I was expecting a Number/Number, just like 1/43 - i mean, a scale is just that. I do the searching myself then -.-
I dont think a lot of people understand the scale discussion because most people dont know on what to base the scale. Im quite sure an action figure collector has no idea what "system scale" is when it comes to Lego System...

2 hours ago, MAB said:

Me too. If a minifigure fits in it or can interact with it in a sensible way, then it is minifigure scale. Of course, different people may see the same build in different ways.

But that is a problem with the question - there is no exact definition of minifigure scale, so there is no correct answer that will please everyone.

Actually TLG themselves set the Minifigure and Town scale to a 1/50 intentionally (watching several interviews, also Legoland Allianz Arena). But because the minifig is slightly larger than 1/50, they tend to narrow it down in a range from 1/46 to 1/43 since 1978. If you take parts like window frames, door frames, lego bicycle mould, you land on 1/43....
Furthermore, 1/43 is a common scale in Toys also from other manufacturers (die cast etc). Makes quite a lot of sense...

[The Brick Boss]

2 hours ago, MAB said:

Me too. If a minifigure fits in it or can interact with it in a sensible way, then it is minifigure scale. Of course, different people may see the same build in different ways.

That's one of those discussions that probably won't be solved until TLG themselves explain everything. 

2 hours ago, MAB said:

But that is a problem with the question - there is no exact definition of minifigure scale, so there is no correct answer that will please everyone.

No. There isn't an exact definition. That's a problem. 

[TeriXeri]

I don't think there's a need to define an exact scale, a lot about LEGO is about imagination, and it's up to the builder to choose for more realism.

Even within the same themes like City and Creator 3-in-1, all sets that came with minifigures can vary a lot, there are comically small 4-wide "Town-size" cars, to 8 wide vehicles.

I personally just define 3 levels of scale, Micro/Nano , Minifig and large scale as there's too much variation.

Microscale : 

Minifig scale : 

  to even  

Large Scale :

 

 

Even while a set like the orange car is about 8+ wide and doesn't come with minfigs, the design still clearly has a defined 2x2 seating area for a figure, in all 3 builds.

And of course Town set vehicles at 4 wide were generally a lot smaller, but even nowadays there's choice how to build up a city. Some people build up in Creator Expert modular scale, others build 3-in-1 scale, or a mix of such.

And if I look at my own collection of vehicles, which are mostly recent City and 3-in-1, of course there's some "comically" large size differences, but I personally have no issues with it, it's LEGO, not an historic accurate museum display or something.

 

And even going to other themes, there's even larger "minifig scale" vehicles like this, but this is not based on any real life city car.

 

Comparing 2 of the same car model in different scale like the F40, I only consider the Speed Champion set as minifig scale, even while the Expert model clearly has more realism with the 2 seats etc.

 

 

 

 

Edited September 30, 2019 by TeriXeri

[lego the hutt]

@ Ron

Again, Lego is not a perfect medium so trying to narrow it down to an exact 1/X scale is futile (though, as others mentioned, if you want to define a range of scale that is fine...though I'm not sure what good it does?).  That being said, the one thing that can be clearly acknowledged is that system scale and minifig scale are definitely different. To use the two terms interchangeably is a mistake that has been going on for at least a couple decades that I have been in the hobby...and a major reason why this has been discussed so often. It is still happening in this thread.

I encourage those who are interested in this topic to look up the number of places it has been discussed before.  I know there was a lengthy discussion on FBTB, I think rebelscum, maybe here as well?  Likely other forums too.  Though I caution people about the wiki, it has some very bad info that I saw in my quick, 5min search.

Edited September 30, 2019 by lego the hutt

[Exetrius]

22 hours ago, Aanchir said:

Scale down or diminish in number those parts of the model that would be either be repetitive to build and play with, or would cramp/close off other playable spaces.

 

22 hours ago, Aanchir said:

Seeing those images above and thinking about scale in this respect, I can't help but be reminded of how content-aware scaling works in web design or image editing. Detail is preserved but any big spaces between the discernable details are trimmed down as needed.

I think this is the core of the matter, and your examples support it too. In the sets, the size of the complete thing is ultimately determined by the size of its constituent details (which I'd call features), not by the "big spaces" that make up the rest of the build.

I think this discussion resurfaces time and time again because there are essentially two kinds of people: those for who the features alone must be somewhat realisically scaled relative to a minifigure, and those for who both features and "big spaces" must be somewhat realistic relative to a minifigure. It comes down to personal preference.

 

(Btw, glad to see you posting again, Aanchir!)

[MAB]

 

There are similar comments on this thread from 2011. System and minifig scale are and have been used interchangeably as they are both somewhat ill-defined and often overlap.

[ArneNielsen]

On 8/19/2019 at 10:56 AM, MAB said:

average male height of 1.75m reported in many European

Well, in my country (Denmark, where LEGO originates), the average height of young males is 181 cm...

[TeriXeri]

With parts having a preset size and studs, it's simply impossible to always scale everthing accurately ( see the Ferrari F40 example above ), compared to the real car, the speed champion's front just sits much higher, and that's also shown comparing it to the larger Expert model.

The smaller a model is, the harder it is to get true minifig scale, many 6+ wide minifig vehicles may seem oversized but that's just what it is to get more details and shaping.

Meanwhile, 4 wide vehicle sets may look too small and blocky instead. (I don't mind that personally, but some people like more realism).

I'm purely talking official sets here, since MOCs are completely up to the builder.

Edited October 1, 2019 by TeriXeri

[MAB]

1 hour ago, ArneNielsen said:

Well, in my country (Denmark, where LEGO originates), the average height of young males is 181 cm...

Yeah, the Scandi countries and The Netherlands have higher averages than UK, Germany, France, Spain etc. But 5cm in ~175cm or so is not going to make much difference to any scale, especially when given the extreme proportional ratios of minifigures.

[lego the hutt]

Why do you think scale of toys should be based on average height?

[MAB]

45 minutes ago, lego the hutt said:

Why do you think scale of toys should be based on average height?

For me, it is because the type of thing I build has people typically standing, and height (rather than width or depth) is the dominant dimension for a figure. Also height is what distinguishes adults from children in LEGO world, their widths and depths are the same.

 

For toys (played with by kids), scale doesn't actually matter too much. For model displays, scale is more important. LEGO is somewhere between the two, exactly where between the two depending on the viewpoint of the user.

[lego the hutt]

That's ok for your personal builds, but in a conversation about scale in general, you have to stick with the industry standard.  Enough people struggle with this already it seems without muddying the waters further.