Making a Proper Shape - A Guide to Human Proportions

<3 *squeezes you*

And i was so tired of looking at my HUD and seeing nothing but 7's and 8's going down the line for peoples height, including newbies that are tweaking the library shapes and maxing the size out on them, that i had to just put it out here for people to find.

Oh, i may have put it one or two places in world...But i ain't tell ya where!

This topic should be stickied, and every resident forced to read and memorise it whenever they open the avatar appearance window. That's what I think, but I'm an artist and therefore a little obsessive over correct proportions ;D

What's up with the people thinking that if everybody followed this guide, everybody would look the same? Have you never seen a crowd of real live humans? Everybody is slightly different. If you know this, then it should be a non-issue.

~Whatever size of the head~ the body will be 8 heads high. YOU CAN'T DISPROVE IT - IT IS A FACT. So what the hell are you going on about?

Height *IS* an indicator of disproportion in Second Life, automatically. There are times when it is an incorrect indicator - like when a persons head size matches their height (as if that ever happens ). But no matter what you say, height is an indicator, as are other factors.

You will not be right in this. No matter how you try to frame it.

The correlation is that it takes a lot more popular opinion to get there at 100L a voted victory than one bidder with a huge wallet.

Never said I have a beef, though I did find what you posted to be a little incomplete is all.. and I said that honestly and straight forward... I even said why. If you have a problem with honest critisism then I suggest you not post this stuff in an open forum. Suggesting I move along is just lame.. put the knives away Briana, I didn't attack you.

This doesn't make sense. If moving the height slider is the same as moving the arm, leg, torso, and neck lengths all at the same time, then why isn't that proportional?


Why? From the way you describe it, it shouldn't seem to matter.

I did not write the guide. I posted this more than once.

I r teh messenger

U r teh shooter

I find knives are good when dealing with sarcasm and condescension.

When you enter a topic with such sarcasm, you get a response that is often times not positive. So do not act so surprised when someone gets defensive against unwarranted sarcasm or condescension.

And ya, telling you to move along is no more lame than attitude you showed in your post.

Don't put it out if you don't want it shoved back in your face...That *is* what you are saying, right? Good advice, give it a try yourself as well.

Because it is changing only those and not the head size, torso thickness, body fat, etc.

I've fiddled with the guide and found I was about half a head too tall, but otherwise pretty close. The trouble is it's all interconnected. Mess with one slider and then the others may be off. According to the guide my legs are perfectly proportioned, yet I am still half a head too tall. If I lower the torso height the legs will then be off. Maybe I should make the head a little bigger? I may leave well enough alone.

Or just go back to being a beagle.

Of all the pin-headed, short-armed, tree-trunk-legged, pencil-necked, brick outhouse-torsoed avs I've seen in my time in SL there's one which still makes me blink in confusion. That would be the woman with the 16 inch waist and 66 inch hips. I keep thinking they're going to snap in half.

That's why you're pissed? That wasn't any kind of insinuation.. that was a laughing shot at the banter revolving around the word "guide" in previous replies, NOT the OP itself.. jeez.

Thank you to everyone that has voiced their appreciation (or even if you did not post but still appreciate it!) for my posting the guide. I appreciate the "thank you's" and I appreciate even more those who decided to not post in anger or in protest as if they were being criticized directly.

It is a guide - that is all.

I mean, if these rules were never broken in nature we wouldn't have:

I'm SENSITIVE LIKE THAT! And these things are hard to tell by keyboard! It's ALL YOUR FAULT!

Now G'nite!

I thought it was a good guide. I still think people should stretch it out a little bit due to the limitations of a monitor and especially if they want to be on the thin side, but thats just my own view.

Zii, if everyone used the same proportions to build their avs, there would be considerable homogeneity. In a crowd of real live humans, people are not slightly different, they are WILDLY different. Only a slim minority of people are actually 8 heads high, have their nipples one head length below that (and even the ones that do, don't get to enjoy it for long!!), etc. Most of them have contracts in Hollywood. In REALITY there is huge variation in proportion, even though real life "content creators" (e.g. fashion and industrial designers) build for those idealized proportions. And that's why some real life avatars (i.e. me) can never find a shirt that fits in the shoulders but still buttons over the boobs or sit in a chair and have feet touch the floor.



Bri, I'm not sure what you are arguing? The guide outlines classical proportions that come from Western, white-biased, European art history. It's a fact that under that schema the ideal proportion sees a body eight heads high, but that's about the end of it as "fact."

I understood Dana to be saying that height alone isn't an indication of disproportionality since one could have a 12 inch head at 8 feet and be just "perfect" or a 6 inch head at 5 feet 6 and miss the idealized proportion boat entirely. I thought she was saying that proportionality is all about the inter-relationship between the measurements, which I'm pretty sure you agree on, and so one can still be very very tall but well-proportioned, which it sounds like you disagree with strongly.

Here's an interesting tidbit: for fun, just now, I decided to measure my real life head. It's about 9 inches, maybe a little under, top to chin. If I were to stack 8 of them up, I should, ideally, be 72 inches tall. But, alack and alas, I am a mere 5 feet! Teh Horror! I must hide my hideousness from the world! Thank the Lindens, my av is more classically proportioned so as not offend the sensitive eyes of the professional designers and artists in-world. How I mine remain unscathed when I look in the mirror every day is a mystery.

There is a difference between the "average human variance" and being 5 or 6 heads off...

I really need to release as a freebie my tweaked camera controls, makes everything look much more... normal and makes a 1.8M avatar feel less midgety.


BTW join the group "League for normally sized avatars" to express your disdain for all those giant trolls and gorilla that are walking the grid.

And Brianna, i hug you for this thread.

My bad, I shouldn't have included that adjective Everybody is different.

Guides like this exist so the average person who doesn't otherwise have use for these measurements can make an avatar that generally looks right. So they know what 'average' is, and can then figure out proper scale by comparison. That doesn't mean they can't be unique...
If somebody already knows these proportions well they can break the rules (8 heads is only an ideal, after all) and still have an avatar that makes sense. If somebody doesn't know them, they're a lot more likely to make big mistakes, such as pin head/t-rex arms.

OK? @__@

Well I for one would like to say thank you (I have yet to see if my avatar is proportioned or not, about to do that now I think, maybe) anywho, I like the guide, it is always good to learn new things.

And thank you Bri for posting it.

I currently have a lot of things written in a way that I understand, but others may not. It is a rather incomplete work in progress. While I do not particularly mind it being passed around here and there as it is, I just want people to understand that.





Thank you!

Once again, I will state that it is a guide, not rules that are written in stone. The goal in mind is to give people a well proportioned shape that is 7/7.5 heads tall (I never go for 8, personally) with all the parts generally where they should be. From this base, they can create variations to give the shape their own personal touch. Humans look "human" for a reason, if things veer too far from that, it no longer resembles what people think of as human.

In first life, there is quite a bit of variation between people, we all know this, but if you measure the proportions of a large group of people, you will start to see certain averages. Average arm lengths, average heights, average this and that! After all, we are all the same species and while we have our differences, everything will generally be in about the same location and limbs or what not will be within a specific range for a body type.

I will use clothing is an example, most people can find a lot of clothes that fit them great, even though the designers may have never seen wearers. This is because there were enough people with similar proportions/size to make selling a piece of clothing with those measurements profitable. This is also the reason why there are specialty shops that cater to those which cannot wear "standard" clothing.

Hopefully this clears a bit up!

If you would like to see another nice guide with a few more example shapes, pop over to Doomed Ship, you can find a nice shape package for free at the entrance area. Not to mention the rather large build itself is wonderful and built to a realistic scale.

You can look proportionate in SL at 3ft 9 ......or 5ft 4 ......or at 7ft foot. As a Body Shape maker I could post pics of all those heights to show you what I mean....but won't as it might be deemed as company promotion.

The 8 heads fitting a body is not exact....there is in fact a range where most bodies fall under. Infact it's a bit less than 8.

Vitruvius, a Roman engineer of the first century B.C., influenced Leonardo da Vinci's work in architecture and also his drawing of the human figure. That is to say, eight heads tall became the standard measure of the human figure in Roman art for all adult subjects. But their contributions do not end there, thanks primarily to an architect named Vitruvius.

One of Leonardo's drawings is called the Vitruvian Man. It is based on a model of ideal proportions which Vitruvius established. The Vitruvian proportions were actually nearer 7.5 heads. The Ancient Greeks before them, had it nearer to 7 and had a different calculation for both man and woman.

....and before the Greeks--> The ancient Egyptians were the first ones that we know created a system that can be considered a Canon of Proportion. They used a grid system to check the proportions of their drawings and sculptures of people; the grid consisted of a certain number of square grid units; the size of the grid units could be varied to change the size of the final artwork



Well the theory & science has developed over the years...and the value for modern Man and woman is nearer the 8 heads tall....but it's still a range that would show the human body to be proportionate...it's not a fixed number 8 for everyone......you could look proportionately fine at 7.5 heads or even less.

As regards the OP post....it is what is ....a guideline to arrive to proportionality.

SL shape sliders don't allow you really to fine tune your Avatar....just imagine if you tried to replicate the calculations of of Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo broke Vitruvius’ proportions down to an even finer level. The text surrounding the Vitruvian Man, which is written backwards, reads as follows:

a palm is the width of four fingers
a foot is the width of four palms
a cubit is the width of six palms
a man's height is four cubits (and thus 24 palms)
a pace is four cubits
the length of a man's outspread arms is equal to his height
the distance from the hairline to the bottom of the chin is one-tenth of a man's height
the distance from the top of the head to the bottom of the chin is one-eighth of a man's height
the maximum width of the shoulders is a quarter of a man's height
the distance from the elbow to the tip of the hand is one-fifth of a man's height
the distance from the elbow to the armpit is one-eighth of a man's height
the length of the hand is one-tenth of a man's height
the distance from the bottom of the chin to the nose is one-third of the length of the head
the distance from the hairline to the eyebrows is one-third of the length of the face
the length of the ear is one-third of the length of the face

Leonardo’s proportions (and, by extension, Vitruvius’) have been used by many artists over the course of the last several hundred years, and have been considered gospel by many for much of that time. The interesting thing is that Leonardo’s and Vitruvius’ proportions, which are still used today by artists and can still be found in books on the human figure, are actually inaccruate! It's argued the true figure is nearer 7.25 heads


Looli....what height do you get when you multiply your head height by 7.25 times?

I actually found a test of results based on data supplied of U.S Military personel ( several thousand) which happens to have a wide cross section of ethnic groups, The results are quite an eye opener.......the true median found for both Male and Female from that sample test was 7.2 heads!! The variances ranged from at least one woman who was 5.9 heads tall, and at least one man who who was 8.9 heads tall, so our population is quite diverse in terms of height in heads.


From what i read it seems the 8 heads rule (Leonardo's) is based on the perfect human speciman in terms of proportionality....the Greeks who calculated 7 heads are actually nearer the mark for today's "average" human being.

It's good advice and I wish more 'shape designers' paid attention to it.

One thing I would say is that the disjunction between avatar height and SL measurements is only going to be fixed if the physics are tightened up because the physics (or behaviour) of SL aren't very well suited to RL sizes.

I once set out to build a realistically proportioned house with 3 metre tall walls and the first thing I had to do was compromise with 3.5 metres in order for the camera to work. Then I found that even reasonably sized avs were unable to teleport into the room because of the landing offset: guests would find themselves upstairs or on the roof.

I couldn't build stairs at an RL gradient either because that was far too steep and I didn't think it was cool to keep falling downstairs. Also, I find that I often cannot negotiate building features that aren't visibly large or out of proportion but prove to be obstructive when I attempt to walk up or over them.

I have experienced a host of building issues like this in my own work and the work of others, which I can't call to mind right now, but the upshot is that I have a house that is disproportionately large by comparison with my average-sized av: it has to be otherwise I couldn't use it.

Space in SL tends to be visually way to expansive for similar reasons and I think the preponderance of gigantic avs is a direct result of residents compensating for this.

I should add that judging 'age' by height is damn foolish. Personally, I would have no trouble seeing this as representative of a woman:



And this as an adolescent in her early-teens:



Nevertheless, I am frequently shocked in RL by the incapacity of many clients to 'read' the information in an image. Even without the benefit of studying art, design or anatomy, I would expect more folk to understand what they are looking at but the plain fact is that a surprising number of people are themselves no more visually literate than a child.

Everything Rene and Vaelissa said has been spot on.

I do not know why anyone is still kvetching about they themselves not fitting classical human proportions in RL.

My RL J-Lo sized butt doesn't fit classical proportions either, but I am not complaining. It does not make me a mutant, but it does make it hard for me to find jeans and pants that look right on my butt and waist. *shrug* So what, your real life fleshy avatar does not fit classical proportions - oh noes! No reason to go on and on about it. We are talking about a medium of virtual existence that allows us to manipulate our shapes to be as perfect as a Greek Goddess or as imperfect as a 21st century human - the choice is yours.

To be...or not to be tall, THAT is the question..