Scale vs Proportion: Why Two 1/10 Kits Can Look Nothing Alike
Two kits listed at 1/10 can arrive and look like they came from different hobbies. Same number on the listing, same shelf, and one of them looks wrong next to the other. Nothing was mislabelled. The scale ratio was never describing the thing you were actually comparing.
Scale tells you how big a figure is. Proportion tells you how it is built. They are separate decisions made by the sculptor, and most of the disappointment people have when a kit arrives comes from reading the first number and assuming it covered the second.
Why two kits at the same scale look nothing alike
A sculptor working in a stylised idiom enlarges the parts that carry expression. Heads get bigger relative to the body, hands and weapons get thicker, shoulders get broader. A sculptor working realistically keeps human proportions and lets the detail do the work instead.
Both approaches are legitimate and both appear across our catalogue. The most extreme version is the chibi range, where the head can be a third of the total height and the whole point is the exaggeration. At the other end, a 1/8 character sculpt is usually close to real human proportion, because at that size an oversized head stops reading as style and starts reading as a mistake.
This is worth separating from a term you will run into elsewhere. Wargamers use "heroic scale" for 28mm and 32mm figures with deliberately chunky proportions, and it exists for a specific reason: a figure two centimetres tall, viewed from a metre away across a table, needs exaggeration to be readable at all. That logic does not carry to a twenty centimetre display piece you look at from thirty centimetres. Different problem, different solution.
What the scale numbers actually mean
A ratio is arithmetic. 1/10 means one tenth of life size, and if you take a 175cm adult as the reference, that lands around 17 to 18cm. The full reasoning behind those reference figures is in our scale guide.
| Label | Rough height, plain standing figure | What it suits |
|---|---|---|
| Chibi | 7cm to 9cm | Desk piece, grouped collection |
| 75mm | Around 9cm overall | Single figure, vignette |
| 1/12 | Around 15cm | Shelf collection |
| 1/10 | 17cm to 18cm | Display piece, small diorama |
| 1/9 | 19cm to 20cm | Display centrepiece |
| 1/8 | Around 22cm | Large centrepiece |
75mm is the odd one out because it is not a ratio at all. It is a measurement, and by convention it is taken from the base to the figure's eye level rather than the top of the head, which is why a 75mm kit like Frodo Baggins ends up taller than 75mm once you include the skull and the base.
What the ratio does not tell you
The table above describes a person standing still. Almost nothing in a figure catalogue is a person standing still.
Take Urbased: Breathe the Wilderness. It is a 1/9 kit, so the arithmetic says roughly 19cm. It is about 34cm tall, because the composition includes far more than a figure, and the height that matters to your shelf is the height of the whole assembled piece. Or Gimli and Legolas, a 1/10 kit at about 24.8cm, taller than the 17 to 18cm the ratio implies because two figures and a base stack up.
So the ratio is useful for one thing: predicting how a figure will look standing beside another figure. For predicting whether it fits the shelf, ignore it and read the stated height in centimetres, which is on every listing.
Putting different kits on one shelf
Matching heights is the obvious move and it is only half the job. A stylised 1/10 sculpt beside a realistic 1/10 sculpt will still look mismatched, because your eye compares head size and shoulder width before it compares total height.
What actually works:
- Group by idiom rather than by number. Chibis look right together and look odd interrupting a row of realistic figures. Give them their own shelf or their own end of one.
- Use height difference deliberately instead of trying to eliminate it. A 1/8 centrepiece with 1/12 figures around it reads as composed. The same two pieces at almost the same height reads as an accident.
- Separate by depth, not just by position. Two figures at different distances from the viewer stop inviting direct comparison.
- Scale scenery to the figure it sits with, not to a ruler. A doorway that looks right next to a stylised sculpt is usually slightly larger than strict arithmetic would give you.
What proportion changes about painting
Stylised sculpts are more forgiving to paint, which is the practical argument for starting with one. A larger face gives you room to place highlights without a magnifier. Thicker weapon edges hold an edge highlight without the line wobbling. Broad armour panels take freehand work that would be unreadable on a realistic sculpt at the same height.
Realistic sculpts ask for the opposite discipline. The detail is finer and closer together, transitions need to be smoother, and mistakes are harder to hide because there is less exaggeration to absorb them. Neither is harder overall. They reward different things.
One rule holds for both, and it is the one most people learn late: paint for more contrast than looks right on the workbench. Shelf lighting is softer and further away than a desk lamp, and shading that looks heavy at arm's length is usually about right once the figure is where it will live. Our step by step painting guide covers the workflow from primer onwards.
What the listings tell you, and what to ask
Every kit is made to order in the Netherlands after you place the order, so there is no shelf stock and no photograph of your specific kit waiting to be taken. What the listing gives you is the scale, the assembled height in centimetres, the sculptor, the finish level, and the dispatch window for that finish level.
Finish level is the one people skim, and it changes what actually arrives. Taking Frodo Baggins as the example:
- Bronze, 22.99 euro. Supports removed, washed, cured and quality checked. You sand, fill and prime. Dispatch in 2 to 5 business days.
- Silver, 35.99 euro. Bronze plus support marks sanded and visible holes filled. Dispatch in 4 to 8 business days.
- Gold, 47.99 euro. Silver plus all gaps filled and primed in your choice of colour. Dispatch in 6 to 14 business days.
Bronze is not "no work required", and it is worth being clear about that before you order. Every kit arrives with supports off, washed and fully cured, so none of the resin printing chores land on you. But at Bronze the sanding, filling and priming are yours to do. If you want to go from box to brush, that is Gold. The finish levels guide goes through the differences properly, and the guide to choosing a kit covers matching one to what you actually want to do with it.
Two things the listings do not currently give you: the base diameter, and which point the height is measured from on a given sculpt. If either matters for what you are planning, ask us before ordering. We can measure it. That is a faster route than guessing from a photograph, and it is the sort of question the contact form exists for.
One more thing worth stating plainly. The character sculpts are unofficial fan art. We buy a commercial print licence from the digital sculptor who made the model, which is not the same as approval from whoever owns the character.
Living with resin
Resin is rigid and does not flex, so the vulnerable points are exactly the ones stylisation tends to exaggerate: sword tips, outstretched fingers, thin capes. Handle a finished figure by the base rather than the body.
Ultraviolet light yellows resin over time, so keep figures out of direct sun. Heat is the faster problem: a warm windowsill or a spot above a radiator will soften and warp a piece well before sunlight discolours it. There is more on both in the storage guide.
The question I get most often is some version of "will this look right next to the one I already have", and the honest answer is that I usually cannot tell from the two listings alone. What I can do is measure. Send me the name of the kit you already own and the one you are looking at, and I will give you both heights from the same point on the figure, which is the comparison you actually wanted.
— Nyx
The short version
- Scale is size. Proportion is build. A listing tells you the first and not the second.
- Ratios predict how figures look beside each other, not whether they fit the shelf. For that, read the stated height in centimetres.
- 75mm is a measurement to eye level, not a ratio, so the finished piece is taller than 75mm.
- Pose, base and composition can add ten centimetres or more over what the arithmetic suggests.
- Group stylised and realistic sculpts separately, and use height differences on purpose rather than fighting them.
- Bronze means the printing work is done and the sanding and priming are yours. Gold means box to brush.
