I'm working on an article that explores how to better understand and apply the concepts of "scale" to create better LEGO models.  This raises a pretty fundamental question which I do not feel has been adequately answered within the LEGO community - what is the "scale" for the common LEGO figures we use in our models.
 

Minifig / Minidoll

Naturally, we want to start with the classic "minifigure", as well as the newer "minidoll" which has similar width and height.  

I calculated a value of 1:42 for the classic minifigure, and a value of 1:38 for the Minidoll.  The minidoll has fairly realistic proportions, so I feel pretty good about that value.  

What do you think - do you agree with a value of 1:42 for the classic Minifigure?  I have heard a scale of 1:48 cited in several places for the classic minifig, but I believe based on my calculations that this is mostly caused by folks rounding to 1:48, since this is a common scaling factor for model trains and architectural modeling.  (I showed all my calculations at http://brickarchitect.com/scale/ so feel free to correct any mistakes in my measurements or calculations.)
 

Miniland

Moving on to the "Miniland" scale, which describes those brick built figures popularized at LEGO theme parks...

Here, I determined a scale of 1:17 is most accurate, although I have also seen 1:20 cited in a few places.  

Does 1:17 seem accurate?  What do those of you who work in this scale think?
 

Nanofig / Statue fig

Lastly, we have the newer "Nanofig" and "Statue fig" sizes.  We all know that they are very tiny, but how tiny?

By my calculations, they come in at about 1:80 for Nanofig, and 1:125 for Statue Fig.  

I'm very curious to hear what your thoughts are - It's pretty tricky to decide which measurements to use to calculate the height, especially on the smallest "statue fig" size.  Are these values right?
 

Thank you!

Again, my detailed calculations and assumptions are clearly called out at http://brickarchitect.com/scale/ and I would really appreciate the help of the community to confirm that these values are as accurate as possible!


Sincerely,
---Tom Alphin

Tom, I did some similar calculations - but only for Friends minidoll - as I am trying to build some rolling material for a properly scaled Friends-sized train. I came to 1:35.9 as the scale for the Friends Minidoll (assuming the general height of an average (western?) woman to be 1650mm (1m65, 5ft5in), This is a slightly larger scale than the scale for trains as LEGO track compared with normal, standard guage track has a 1:38.8 scale.

To continue my calculations (probably not relevant for your work) I then looked at the right sizes for a train car and ended up with 11 bricks wide, which translates to a 1:37 scale, which in turn means that our LEGO Friends minidoll is now 1.7m tall in real life (5ft7in), still totally realistic. 1:37 is a good compromise between LEGO track scale and LEGO minifig scale. At 1:37, I got:

11 wide train (makes the train 25mm wider than a real-life passenger train wagon, which is merely a rounding error on a 3150mm wide train body)

11.4 bricks high train (11 bricks, 1 plate)

91 studs long

 

At this scale, a passenger car should be 5 or 6 studs wide and a truck 8 studs wide .

 

Isn't 1:48 pushing the height up to something like 6'3". That's crazy. I thought the presumptive men's height was 6' putting us closer to 1:45. However, your numbers sound good to average men and women for minifigure scale. Minidolls tend to represent teenagers, so I wonder if the scale is a bit tall for them.

5 hours ago, thoroakenfelder said:

Isn't 1:48 pushing the height up to something like 6'3". That's crazy. I thought the presumptive men's height was 6' putting us closer to 1:45. However, your numbers sound good to average men and women for minifigure scale. Minidolls tend to represent teenagers, so I wonder if the scale is a bit tall for them.

Teenagers and adults represented as minidolls all have the same height so I would assume the teenagers are represented in their post-growth phase.