New Size Scale Discussion

I think just stacking 50 ft to most giant predators, those above 50 ft, should be fine.

I don't really think such a simple addition is the way to go about it either. What needs to be done is for the authors to review how large they want their characters to be in relation to a human and an average point. All of my median numbers for Crisis keep falling somewhere between 120~140 ft. However, it really is up to the author to determine size - simply tacking on a number isn't an appropriate determination for character size, and simply multiplying by a conversion isn't either.


For my characters I have rewritten the token, starting with Reya based on measurements I came up with and consulted with various women to determine accuracy based on how I described Reya to be. I'm still jostling about the numbers myself, figuring out how large Reya should be. Going to the effort of rewriting such a thing means that one should put forth a good measure of thought and not take a simplistic approach to reevaluating characters.

Sean Okotami wrote:

What about those like Lamina Harpies (around 40 ft tall) and Dryads (usually quite taller than the average predator)? How much taller should they be? Oh, should we also upscale newborns too? If so, how big should they big compared to their mother? About only a third of their size?

If a species is designed to be small, they can stay that way, like Jumping Dridders, which are designed to be around 40ft tall.

We don't have a set height for Dryads now, only that they are taller on average than regular preds. No need for that to change even when we upscale the rest of the preds.

You don't need to upscale the newborns. I made my big posts of pred parenting, birth and growth in relation to the manga sizes, not the wiki ones. I haven't made any ideas around those in ages, since I always assumed they were not valid anymore.

Egg-born preds (Dridders, most nagas, etc) are tiny and weak when they are born. Near human-sized for the most part. Live-born preds (elves, fairies, centaurs, etc) are much larger, but devlop at a somewhat slower rate. Harpies kind of straddle the middle, I imagine, since they hatch from eggs, but are not really tauric like the other egg-laying preds. I can dig up my old posts on the matter if it needs to be spelled out clearer.

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I don't really think such a simple addition is the way to go about it either. What needs to be done is for the authors to review how large they want their characters to be in relation to a human and an average point. All of my median numbers for Crisis keep falling somewhere between 120~140 ft. However, it really is up to the author to determine size - simply tacking on a number isn't an appropriate determination for character size, and simply multiplying by a conversion isn't either.

It is that simple. Crisis' height was used as the average. People based their own characters' heights around that. All that is happening is the scaling up of the average. Its a simple fix for an issue that has needed to be changed for a while.

I agree with what Cliff said last. I admit it, I used Crisis as the average for my giants, well, some of them, and made them taller/shorter as they needed to be.

rcs619 wrote:

If a species is designed to be small, they can stay that way, like Jumping Dridders, which are designed to be around 40ft tall.

I agree, not all preds need to be scaled up. Hence my point of the authors needing to take this into account just as much as sweeping the average height.

rcs619 wrote:

We don't have a set height for Dryads now, only that they are taller on average than regular preds. No need for that to change even when we upscale the rest of the preds.

Mmh, I would say it should be taken into account. I agree that overall a dryad should still remain larger than other preds, but there is a saving grace - dryads are part tree and their human body is only a portion of that size. Unlike a human/elf/tauric pred that is entirely made up of their own frame. How large the 'human' frame is then can be variable depending on the 'container' frame of their dryad portion. Cypress is a great example of this.

rcs619 wrote:

You don't need to upscale the newborns. I made my big posts of pred parenting, birth and growth in relation to the manga sizes, not the wiki ones. I haven't made any ideas around those in ages, since I always assumed they were not valid anymore.

Egg-born preds (Dridders, most nagas, etc) are tiny and weak when they are born. Near human-sized for the most part. Live-born preds (elves, fairies, centaurs, etc) are much larger, but devlop at a somewhat slower rate. Harpies kind of straddle the middle, I imagine, since they hatch from eggs, but are not really tauric like the other egg-laying preds. I can dig up my old posts on the matter if it needs to be spelled out clearer.

Ok, I really really disagree with this. The size, not the weakness. Dridders should be initially weak when born, their carapace hasn't had a chance to harden. Human sized though? Then remove the mother's breasts. They don't need them. They sure as hell won't be breastfeeding a creature the size of a human. Explain to me how the mother is supposed to care for their young in such a scenario. The eggs themselves can be human sized when they are laid, but when they hatch the baby needs to be larger than a human to receive food from the mother. That, or the children are not nurtured by the parents as they are now and thus they have no need for breasts. You can have the one, or you can have the other, but you can't have both.

Mammaries are present only in mammals - hence the name - and the only egg laying mammals have no teats. The predators of Felarya are combinations of mammal and beast, thus as it stands now they do not fall into the category of the oviparous mammals. Those have patches of skin that release milk from pores which is then channeled for the young. Mammaries, but no breasts. The eggs of a platypus are on average 11cm in size, where the mother is an average of 43 cm in size. That means the egg is roughly 25% of their body in length. If you go this route, the current human breasts are 'fetish only' territory as they can't serve the purpose they were actually designed for.

rcs619 wrote:

[size=16]It is that simple. Crisis' height was used as the average. People based their own characters' heights around that. All that is happening is the scaling up of the average. Its a simple fix for an issue that has needed to be changed for a while.

While it is an overall simple diorama of 'scaling up', it is not a 'simple fix'. The authors need to sit down and think about how large their characters should be to fit within the realm of their stories and the behavior of said characters. Some characters will not require the same adjustment, so applying a conversion or the additive or multiplicative sort to them will only skew things further. Others will require serious thought to properly adjust their size, so rushing through it will only result in more problems. Treating this as a simple 1,2 punch - wipe and done like the sarcastic nuclear equivalent of decontamination 900 > 450 > less than will result in poor execution and could possibly require it to be revisited later. Sit down, think about it, and do it right or don't do it at all.

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Then remove the mother's breasts. They don't need them. They sure as hell won't be breastfeeding a creature the size of a human. Explain to me how the mother is supposed to care for their young in such a scenario. The eggs themselves can be human sized when they are laid, but when they hatch the baby needs to be larger than a human to receive food from the mother. That, or the children are not nurtured by the parents as they are now and thus they have no need for breasts. You can have the one, or you can have the other, but you can't have both.

I thought it was common knowledge that most preds are not going to breastfeed their young. Even when they were 70ft tall, it was impossible. Dryads have breasts and they don't even give birth in a traditional sense. It seems a decent bet that the preds did not evolve naturally. They don't have breasts because of how they've grown and developed as a species, they have them because they are part human. Could they still be functional? Maybe, but they aren't going to be breastfeeding their kids. The only ones that could do that would be Fairies, Elves, Centaurs, and other species where the newborn is closer in relative scale to the size of a human infant.

The parents can still protect the child, and show it what kind of plants, and fruit are good to eat, and help it learn to catch small game to eat. It seems that some predators don't even care for their kids, and just leave their eggs after laying them. These young predators have to learn to hide and survive from birth. Whether this is determined by species or parental preferrence hasn't really been touched on yet. The natural instincts of the predators will be helpful as well...since they will already have natural drives to hide, and hunt and such.

The main advantage to egg-laying is for the parent. The mother's pregnancy is very minor, and she never really shows it that much. This is good for nagas and dridders (having to climb all the time), mermaids (because they need to be quick and agile to avoid underwater dangers) and harpies (because they need to fly). If they had to go through a more normal pregnancy like fairies, elves, nekos, humans and the like have to, there's almost no way they would be able to continue with their normal, everyday activities. When the child is born, it is around human-sized, but they develop at a quicker rate than a live-born predator, which would go through a defensless phase similar to a human baby.

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While it is an overall simple diorama of 'scaling up', it is not a 'simple fix'. The authors need to sit down and think about how large their characters should be to fit within the realm of their stories

If they based their characters' heights on the average pred size, it is an easy fix. If the character is from another world (Aurora) or their species is designed to be small (Jumping dridders), then yes, the creator would have to say "Hey, they're supposed to be that way. Don't worry about scaling them up."

What most people did is base their character's height relative to Crisis' height. It's completely understandable, since Crisis is the main character, we know how big she is relative to a lot of things because Karbo draws her a lot. That includes humans.

I agree with Aether that just saying "multiply by X formula" or "add X feet" isn't going to work for everything. I don't agree with exactly the size he's proposing. I think that they don't have to be quite that big.

So, a possible solution is to determine how big Crisis should be, determine how large characters are relative to her then revise their height based on that.

well if you roughly guestimate, you can assume that your hip is about 1/2 your height, and your knees are about 1/4, halfway down your shin is about 1/8, and just above your ankle is about 1/16 right? Though that's still like 4 in off the ground, and too hard to swallow normally.

I'd say judging from the size in the pictures drawn by karbo, a human is roughly ankle sized in height compared to a giant pred, which is more like 1/20th the height of a human. So if a normal human is about 6' tall and that's ankle height for an average sized naga, then the roughly scaled up height would be closer to 120 ft tall, or at least around there. For a human though, it's difficult to swallow anything whole that's 1 in or bigger. Granted, the preds in Felarya aren't exactly human ^^;

Still, this was just a rough estimate. Maybe an average fairy's max height is about 100-110 ft, and a Giant Naga's is about 120. Giant Mermaids would probably reach about 150 ft in average length.

rcs619 wrote:

I thought it was common knowledge that most preds are not going to breastfeed their young. Even when they were 70ft tall, it was impossible. Dryads have breasts and they don't even give birth in a traditional sense. It seems a decent bet that the preds did not evolve naturally. They don't have breasts because of how they've grown and developed as a species, they have them because they are part human. Could they still be functional? Maybe, but they aren't going to be breastfeeding their kids. The only ones that could do that would be Fairies, Elves, Centaurs, and other species where the newborn is closer in relative scale to the size of a human infant.

The parents can still protect the child, and show it what kind of plants, and fruit are good to eat, and help it learn to catch small game to eat. It seems that some predators don't even care for their kids, and just leave their eggs after laying them. These young predators have to learn to hide and survive from birth. Whether this is determined by species or parental preferrence hasn't really been touched on yet. The natural instincts of the predators will be helpful as well...since they will already have natural drives to hide, and hunt and such.

The main advantage to egg-laying is for the parent. The mother's pregnancy is very minor, and she never really shows it that much. This is good for nagas and dridders (having to climb all the time), mermaids (because they need to be quick and agile to avoid underwater dangers) and harpies (because they need to fly). If they had to go through a more normal pregnancy like fairies, elves, nekos, humans and the like have to, there's almost no way they would be able to continue with their normal, everyday activities. When the child is born, it is around human-sized, but they develop at a quicker rate than a live-born predator, which would go through a defensless phase similar to a human baby.

Actually, no, it isn't common knowledge, and I definitely rebel against the 'because their half human' handwave explanation. I have never thought of my preds as such. From my own standpoint, Jewel Dridders breastfeed while Eurhyssa do not. This is why a Jewel Dridder's breasts still work, and why a Eurhyssa's breasts have become much smaller and do not produce a milk that could be consumed for nutritional value. I agree the egglaying gives them an advantage, but it certainly doesn't have to follow that they cannot breastfeed. As I just recently pointed out, the mammals that do lay eggs both breastfeed. Additionally, the size of the young falls exactly into the same percentage band as a human, with the median of the child length being 23~26% of a human's height.

So actually, it is quite possible, and it follows to me that it carry through the same way. Otherwise, I do not get why they have breasts. The 'half human' explanation is a rubbish hand-wave at best. Humans have breasts to breast-feed and, still strongly debated, as a physiological means for attracting mates. Right now it would seem that Felarya only has them for the latter and for distracting humans, because well [insert humans-will-bork-anything.jpg images here]. Of course, you could go even deeper as I did earlier with the psychological discussion of why preds choose their menus as they do based on how the children of said appropriate heights never have to concern themselves with being the victims of their own practices as the things that could eat them whole and alive are few and far between. That isn't to say they don't fear being eaten, just that a kensha isn't going to be swallowing them down in one piece.

rcs619 wrote:

If they based their characters' heights on the average pred size, it is an easy fix. If the character is from another world (Aurora) or their species is designed to be small (Jumping dridders), then yes, the creator would have to say "Hey, they're supposed to be that way. Don't worry about scaling them up."

No, you're missing the point. You can't just upscale the current numbers because of the various factors at play. IE: Head to ground height for a naga. The naga's tail portion that stands upright does not always carry the same proportions as a human's legs in relation to the 'human' portion. It does seem to do so as much for Crisis (though you can see it occasionally represented in the mangas, particularly in the first one in a smaller panel right after Subeta changes size and is walking side by side with Crisis), but other nagas shown in comparison do not follow this rule. Then there is the size of dridders - a dridder with a 'height' the same as a naga is going to be much larger in appearance if not shear size due to the legs - think about it, when you measure a spider's size most people don't measure the body, they measure the body and the legs. Then we can see yet more differences between Anko and Fiona - the scales are not linear and so you can't just apply a number to everything with one base and call it good.

Anime-Junkie wrote:

What most people did is base their character's height relative to Crisis' height. It's completely understandable, since Crisis is the main character, we know how big she is relative to a lot of things because Karbo draws her a lot. That includes humans.

I agree with Aether that just saying "multiply by X formula" or "add X feet" isn't going to work for everything. I don't agree with exactly the size he's proposing. I think that they don't have to be quite that big.

So, a possible solution is to determine how big Crisis should be, determine how large characters are relative to her then revise their height based on that.

This makes for a good starting point, to use Crisis as the major since we have the most artwork of her and how humans appear in relation to her. We also have a few good shots of Vivian. On the size issue though, I thought I had pretty much already covered this in depth but I will go into it again, right after I address this...

Archmage_Bael wrote:

well if you roughly guestimate, you can assume that your hip is about 1/2 your height, and your knees are about 1/4, halfway down your shin is about 1/8, and just above your ankle is about 1/16 right? Though that's still like 4 in off the ground, and too hard to swallow normally.

I'd say judging from the size in the pictures drawn by karbo, a human is roughly ankle sized in height compared to a giant pred, which is more like 1/20th the height of a human. So if a normal human is about 6' tall and that's ankle height for an average sized naga, then the roughly scaled up height would be closer to 120 ft tall, or at least around there. For a human though, it's difficult to swallow anything whole that's 1 in or bigger. Granted, the preds in Felarya aren't exactly human ^^;

Still, this was just a rough estimate. Maybe an average fairy's max height is about 100-110 ft, and a Giant Naga's is about 120. Giant Mermaids would probably reach about 150 ft in average length.

For a 6' tall average human, the measurements would be as follows:
Ankle - 3.4" - 0.0472% - 1/16th would be 0.0625
Knee - 1' 7.2" - 0.26% - This is almost dot on 1/4
Hips - 3' 5.1" - 0.57083 - A bit more than 1/2 (the crotch would be closer to 1/2)
Chest - 4' 2.8"
Neck - 4' 11.1"

Tongue size is around 4.1" long for the same person, 1.5" can be stuck outside of the mouth. Scale this up one to one, and a pred 100 ft should have a tongue of 5.694 ft in length with the ability to stick out 2.08 ft from the mouth. Obviously these numbers will differ for different species, such as mermaids and nagas. Still, the point is thus - a predator that is only 100 ft tall with these dimensions cannot do to a human what we see in the manga happening.

The mouth size needs to be large enough to support more - Lea is almost 6' tall. In the third manga when she is placed in Melany's mouth, we see that she is able to rest laid out on the tongue - with her arms out and forward! So the tongue needs to be at least 6' long, if not 7 or 8 to pull this off. That could only be accomplished with a pred that is 120~140 ft high based on all the varying evidence and formulas I can bring to bear on it. Of course, we don't know how big Melany is/was during that shot, though she appears to be the same height or perhaps slightly taller than Anna/Crisis head-to-ground from the fourth tome.

The second manga shows this as well somewhat with the human female mage that is eaten by Vivian - however we don't know how tall she is so an accurate extrapolation cannot be made. Also, I do think that we have to assume preds can swallow objects a bit larger than a normal human could - I know I would have difficulty swallowing something of that size ratio but bringing neck sizes into this would only make the requisite necessary height all the more higher.

So outside of personal preference, you really still have done nothing to show that a smaller pred will work out to accomplish what we see done in the manga. And hence why I feel like I'm now preaching to you all about this since you seem to have taken the idea on-board only to ineffectively apply it.

Whatever. This is why we can't have nice things, everyone's gotta bitch and complain about every little proposed change.

Im done with this thread. Hopefully Karbo will end up making the right choices on the matter.

Meh. The whole point of this is to bring to light and correct the height discrepancy as written and as drawn. If it is not to be corrected, than there is no issue. Just go about business as usual and leave everything as it is now.


If it is to be corrected, then it should be done methodically and as accurately as possible, not some sweeping hand-gesture of god-moding that only addresses the surface of the issue. It is not my desire to see the giants become so massive/tall/big/etc as a result that they cease being able to interact with humans, nor is it my desire to see their size increased but not large enough to correct the initial discrepancy - a balancing game is in order here, to determine a proper average and then to apply a curve based on that average and what we know of the different species.

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So outside of personal preference, you really still have done nothing to show that a smaller pred will work out to accomplish what we see done in the manga. And hence why I feel like I'm now preaching to you all about this since you seem to have taken the idea on-board only to ineffectively apply it.

eh I'm not really in the mood to go changing everything just yet, I'm not sure how often I describe my pred characters being a certain height numerically anyway. Though on the off chance that I have more than a few "oh she is 90 ft tall" statements, it will still be a bitch to go through and read it all.

Copy-paste your story into MS word or Notepad++, hit CRTL+F and enter your predator's height. There, you've found all mentions.

Ok it's well about time we tackled this issue ^^;
One big problem is I have extremely vague notion of english measurements. It's simply very hard to me to convert mentally feet into meters.
Another, minor one, is some confusion about naga height. For example if the wiki says that Crisis is 70, that means she is actualy much taller in term of human measurement, as the distance between her wais and the ground is much shorter than if she had legs. And to make things harder it can also widely fluctuate.

But when I draw Crisis, I imagine an human to be roughly the size of her index finger.

You know what ? my very next picture will be a size chart of various characters and how I see them. Then we'll work the size from there once and for all ^^

I reckon there is certainly a valid concern that changing thing would create problem in stories and in the wiki at large, but I think after adressing has become somewhat inevitable now..

Well, if you do go through with it, perhaps this would be a good time to convert Felarya over to the Metric system?

What Aisu said, please.
(Americans are taught both systems, aren't they?)

Karbo wrote:

Ok it's well about time we tackled this issue ^^;
One big problem is I have extremely vague notion of english measurements. It's simply very hard to me to convert mentally feet into meters.
Another, minor one, is some confusion about naga height. For example if the wiki says that Crisis is 70, that means she is actualy much taller in term of human measurement, as the distance between her wais and the ground is much shorter than if she had legs. And to make things harder it can also widely fluctuate.

Yes, this is one of the things I mentioned above. You can't just go throwing a conversion factor at it because if you do the preds that should have the same body frames will have varying body size due to the physical construction of said body frames. As for feet and meters, I recommend using the converter gt500x posted. My numbers don't always match exactly the information it is putting out (though nearly always it is close), and it was obviously designed for a human to human translation with normal legs and such, but it is actually a rather good tool.

Once you figure out how tall someone should be for their mouth size, then you just need to start editing out things like the size of their legs. The converter gives you reference points up and down the body, so your job is made much easier as you pick the appropriate reference point and subtract that from their total height. Since it tells you as well heights in both English and Metric systems you can work out the kinks between them without confusing anyone, regardless of the system you learned on.

The only information left currently outstanding is how the body frame is carried. As previously noted I couldn't tell by how much Crisis' body was differing from a normal human's body. I tried comparing a lot of images however without a reference it is just a guessing game at best.

Karbo wrote:

But when I draw Crisis, I imagine an human to be roughly the size of her index finger.

You know what ? my very next picture will be a size chart of various characters and how I see them. Then we'll work the size from there once and for all ^^

I reckon there is certainly a valid concern that changing thing would create problem in stories and in the wiki at large, but I think after adressing has become somewhat inevitable now..

This would help out a great deal by providing that reference I need. I would honestly recommend using that calculator to create a pred of the appropriate height to carry out the actions they are shown to do. Then if they are not human subtracting away the appropriate human portions using the given reference points. Following that using this new drawing of yours to determine how much distance remains from the ground to the start of the human-like portions.

That would provide the "simplest solution" for everyone which provides the most accurate results. Seeing as not everyone here desires or would be able to sit down and do all the math themselves.

So... does that mean that we upscale or not? Because all I see is just text that blends in together and give no real answer.

Karbo wrote:

...

You know what ? my very next picture will be a size chart of various characters and how I see them. Then we'll work the size from there once and for all ^^

...

When that happens, would you be so kind as to include Beletia in that chart? Beletia is the character that I based my measurements for Helia off of.

gt500x wrote:

When that happens, would you be so kind as to include Beletia in that chart? Beletia is the character that I based my measurements for Helia off of.

It would be very helpful actually if an example of one of each of the major species of similar 'human-portion sizes' were included in this comparison. (At least say a giantess human/fairy, a naga, a dridder, and a harpy) That would make it take longer of course and be more work but I would greatly appreciate having a reference and a comparison to work with.

Since it sounds like we're going to upscale giants, I got sort of a headstart at least. However, I also feel like I got screwed by taking a headstart. The only thing I can understand is that, since Crisis' a snake, then she's actually much bigger than what her given height head-to-ground would make you believe. I am still in favor that first, we get Crisis' new measurements, then we use that to make our characters taller/shorter as they need to be according to her head-to-ground size.

Karbo wrote:

You know what ? my very next picture will be a size chart of various characters and how I see them. Then we'll work the size from there once and for all ^^

That would be very helpful.

Like most people, I used existing characters' heights in the wiki to determine my own characters' heights. Adjusting that to ensure that a giant predator can indeed swallow a human in one smooth easy gulp (for example) will mean errors in existing stories, but the benefit in terms of logic and clarity will, I think, outweigh that disadvantage.

As for the size of baby nagas and dridders and the like... I once wrote that Jissy, at birth, was small enough to be carried by a human. I now think that was something of a goof. I understand the rationale that nagas should lay very small eggs, so that they never have a truly swollen pregnant belly (which would be a hindrance in such a dangerous world), but on the other hand I do think they have breasts for a purpose, not just for decoration. Any species with breasts quite clearly breastfeed their young - which implies that they're big enough to suckle a nipple.

Karbo wrote:

You know what ? my very next picture will be a size chart of various characters and how I see them. Then we'll work the size from there once and for all ^^

Now That would be a really big help Karbo. I'll definitely look forward to seeing it.

Anime-Junkie wrote:

What Aisu said, please.
(Americans are taught both systems, aren't they?)

Yes, or at least I was taught it. I don't see how anyone can get 12 inches in a foot, 5,280 feet in a mile, 16 ounces in a pound, but not multiples of ten. Hell, I still don't have volume units in Am.Standard memorized, but Liters are no problemo for me.

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As for the size of baby nagas and dridders and the like... I once wrote that Jissy, at birth, was small enough to be carried by a human. I now think that was something of a goof. I understand the rationale that nagas should lay very small eggs, so that they never have a truly swollen pregnant belly (which would be a hindrance in such a dangerous world), but on the other hand I do think they have breasts for a purpose, not just for decoration. Any species with breasts quite clearly breastfeed their young - which implies that they're big enough to suckle a nipple.

Part of that would also come with the size of the egg. I found it really weird that Nagas would make eggs so small it would be a fraction of the cloaca's size, or wherever a snake's egg come out.