Post by rodentfanatic on Apr 20, 2012 13:39:43 GMT -5
Some people can guess height and weight just by looking at a person. Some people are great at estimating numbers. I'm not one of those people at all. So when I see an image of a character in my head, I have no idea what to put down for their weight most of the time once I assign their height. My big problem is I used to really overestimate how much a pound was, so I thought that adding just, say, three pounds could make a substantial difference in body type and shape XD I still have a whole lot of trouble with especially muscular characters as well. But over time, my skills on figuring out this stuff have gotten somewhat better...but I'd never have figured diddly-squat out without the help of using these handy-dandy charts over and over and over! So now, I will share them with you, and I hope they are useful to others who had difficulties like me!
This is a photographic height and weight chart, depicting people at various heights and weights. It includes both men and women, and has a wide range to look at!
www.cockeyed.com/photos/bodies/heightweight.html
Two height/weight charts, one for women, and one for men below that. I really like how instead of just listing one weight range for each height, it lists three different ranges depending on your body frame. Your body frame basically refers to your skeletal structure, meaning that having a large one does NOT make you fat, and it is not something that can be changed through weight loss. A person with a larger frame can carry more weight than someone of the same height but a smaller frame and not look fat. For instance, I am 5'4, and I am a little underweight for my height by most standards, but since I have such small bones, I actually just look slim to average instead of sickly. But when I'm the weight that is considered "average" for most girls my height, I look chubby!
www.healthchecksystems.com/heightweightchart.htm
Here's a 'healthy weight' calculator. It works for both genders and goes up past where most height chart does, so if your character is tall, this might be handy!
www.healthstatus.com/calculate/ideal-healthy-weight
This one is for women only, and it takes in to account how the many varying body shapes of women (listed on this site as being pear, banana, apple, and hourglass) can cause women of the same height and weight to look totally different! You can put in different heights and weights, as well as, if you choose, a preferred body type, and find images of women at that size and shape. You can basically play around until you find something like the body you have in mind for your character, then use the height/weight/build description that is attached to it!
www.mybodygallery.com/index.html
Something I've noticed is that when it comes to female characters, people don't seem to realize what weight would realistically go with what height and build, and tend to grievously underestimate it. For instance, they'll describe a character as "slim, but with moderate curves" and then give her a weight that, paired with her height, would make her an absolute twig, not just slim, and with no possibility of curves whatsoever. I rarely see female characters that are much over 120 pounds, even when their described body type says they definitely should be. I think that social conditioning has basically taught us that no matter how tall a girl is or how big her tits are or how physically fit she is (muscles have weight!), she should never ever cross a certain number or she is automatically unsexy. And thus, we wind up with profiles like one I once encountered that claimed a girl was 5'2, 124 pounds, was skinny, had HUGE tits, childbearing hips, sexy tight muscle, and also wore Size Zero jeans and Extra Small shirts.
No. Just no. Firstly, while she may have a tiny waist that is quite skinny, no way are "childbearing" hips going to fit in to Size Zero jeans. Secondly, you cannot have big breasts and wear extra small tops, because fashion designers are really stupid and don't seem to realize that small women can have big breasts or that large women don't always have large breasts. Thirdly, 124 lbs is generally a solid AVERAGE for a 5'2 woman, and if she has the addition of muscle, large tits, and larger hips, she is going to weight substantially MORE. This does not make her fat. It makes her a woman with a tiny waist, an hourglass figure, and fit muscle, just like her profile describes. And she will weigh more than 124 lbs and not wear extra small anything except maybe belts for her bitty waist.
This same profile also made a big point of pointing out how "tiny" and "petite" she was for being a height of 5'2. That's another thing I've noticed about profiles for female characters--people want to make them "tiny" a lot of the time (because smallness tends to be seen as cute/desirable in women for some reason) but they do not actually realize what height is normal, and so they end up making women of average heights but talking about them as if they are midgets. I've looked up the figures, and I can tell you, the average height in America for an adult woman is 5'4, yet I've seen profiles that say things like "while this would be normal for a 14 year old, at her age it's positively tiny!" and nonsense like that. No, it's NOT positively tiny, it's the average, so any girl who is in the range of 5'2 to 5'5 should not be being described as especially short as if they're some kind of remarkably petite pixie. If you want to make tiny characters, give them a properly tiny height, like something under five feet, not something normal like 5'3 (it drove me crazy in the Anita Blake books how Anita always goes on about how short she is at 5'3--NO YOU'RE NOT!) I realize that being short/tall is relative (I'm 5'4, but considered short in my family because all my immediate family members are taller than I am, and all the people on my mother's side, women included, are tall) but since the descriptions in profiles are generally supposed to be speaking from an objective perspective, one should think "Is this height considered short for most women?" and not "Is this height considered short for a woman to me?" because depending on your own height and standards, the two might be very different.
Height averages will also vary depending on ethnicity and national origin, so if your character is short by American standards, she may be average within her own ethnic group if she is of, say, Chinese descent!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_height#Average_height_around_the_world
I haven't really seen any similarly common mistakes surrounding male characters, but this could be because I really don't know much about the male body at all, so if someone else has noticed something relating to these matters that people always seem to get wrong pertaining to men (like, say, characters with 18 inch penises--I *know* that's not possible if you're not literally a horse!), feel free to add it. Please also add any good charts if you have them!
This is a photographic height and weight chart, depicting people at various heights and weights. It includes both men and women, and has a wide range to look at!
www.cockeyed.com/photos/bodies/heightweight.html
Two height/weight charts, one for women, and one for men below that. I really like how instead of just listing one weight range for each height, it lists three different ranges depending on your body frame. Your body frame basically refers to your skeletal structure, meaning that having a large one does NOT make you fat, and it is not something that can be changed through weight loss. A person with a larger frame can carry more weight than someone of the same height but a smaller frame and not look fat. For instance, I am 5'4, and I am a little underweight for my height by most standards, but since I have such small bones, I actually just look slim to average instead of sickly. But when I'm the weight that is considered "average" for most girls my height, I look chubby!
www.healthchecksystems.com/heightweightchart.htm
Here's a 'healthy weight' calculator. It works for both genders and goes up past where most height chart does, so if your character is tall, this might be handy!
www.healthstatus.com/calculate/ideal-healthy-weight
This one is for women only, and it takes in to account how the many varying body shapes of women (listed on this site as being pear, banana, apple, and hourglass) can cause women of the same height and weight to look totally different! You can put in different heights and weights, as well as, if you choose, a preferred body type, and find images of women at that size and shape. You can basically play around until you find something like the body you have in mind for your character, then use the height/weight/build description that is attached to it!
www.mybodygallery.com/index.html
Something I've noticed is that when it comes to female characters, people don't seem to realize what weight would realistically go with what height and build, and tend to grievously underestimate it. For instance, they'll describe a character as "slim, but with moderate curves" and then give her a weight that, paired with her height, would make her an absolute twig, not just slim, and with no possibility of curves whatsoever. I rarely see female characters that are much over 120 pounds, even when their described body type says they definitely should be. I think that social conditioning has basically taught us that no matter how tall a girl is or how big her tits are or how physically fit she is (muscles have weight!), she should never ever cross a certain number or she is automatically unsexy. And thus, we wind up with profiles like one I once encountered that claimed a girl was 5'2, 124 pounds, was skinny, had HUGE tits, childbearing hips, sexy tight muscle, and also wore Size Zero jeans and Extra Small shirts.
No. Just no. Firstly, while she may have a tiny waist that is quite skinny, no way are "childbearing" hips going to fit in to Size Zero jeans. Secondly, you cannot have big breasts and wear extra small tops, because fashion designers are really stupid and don't seem to realize that small women can have big breasts or that large women don't always have large breasts. Thirdly, 124 lbs is generally a solid AVERAGE for a 5'2 woman, and if she has the addition of muscle, large tits, and larger hips, she is going to weight substantially MORE. This does not make her fat. It makes her a woman with a tiny waist, an hourglass figure, and fit muscle, just like her profile describes. And she will weigh more than 124 lbs and not wear extra small anything except maybe belts for her bitty waist.
This same profile also made a big point of pointing out how "tiny" and "petite" she was for being a height of 5'2. That's another thing I've noticed about profiles for female characters--people want to make them "tiny" a lot of the time (because smallness tends to be seen as cute/desirable in women for some reason) but they do not actually realize what height is normal, and so they end up making women of average heights but talking about them as if they are midgets. I've looked up the figures, and I can tell you, the average height in America for an adult woman is 5'4, yet I've seen profiles that say things like "while this would be normal for a 14 year old, at her age it's positively tiny!" and nonsense like that. No, it's NOT positively tiny, it's the average, so any girl who is in the range of 5'2 to 5'5 should not be being described as especially short as if they're some kind of remarkably petite pixie. If you want to make tiny characters, give them a properly tiny height, like something under five feet, not something normal like 5'3 (it drove me crazy in the Anita Blake books how Anita always goes on about how short she is at 5'3--NO YOU'RE NOT!) I realize that being short/tall is relative (I'm 5'4, but considered short in my family because all my immediate family members are taller than I am, and all the people on my mother's side, women included, are tall) but since the descriptions in profiles are generally supposed to be speaking from an objective perspective, one should think "Is this height considered short for most women?" and not "Is this height considered short for a woman to me?" because depending on your own height and standards, the two might be very different.
Height averages will also vary depending on ethnicity and national origin, so if your character is short by American standards, she may be average within her own ethnic group if she is of, say, Chinese descent!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_height#Average_height_around_the_world
I haven't really seen any similarly common mistakes surrounding male characters, but this could be because I really don't know much about the male body at all, so if someone else has noticed something relating to these matters that people always seem to get wrong pertaining to men (like, say, characters with 18 inch penises--I *know* that's not possible if you're not literally a horse!), feel free to add it. Please also add any good charts if you have them!