What are your preferred heights for them?

Use Imperial/Metric measurments

 

BIG



Although really I'm fine so long as they are on the larger side. So as long as Decepticon Megatron is 6 meters (around the shortest he's been) I should be fine.

 

I can see that. i got OP and megs at 32'5"

 

The size of the thing they turn into.

 

I am more into the big comic book size. Which makes for a Prime around 30ft/9m. to 40ft/12m.

 

Respect.

 

Basically this, but for average heights this is my gold standard:

 

i like this approach too, but it begins to fall apart when you consider seekers. Starscream should be upwards of 50ft. Even if you try and weirdly compress him.

 

Make him a smaller Jet.
I have him as a General Dynamics F-16.

Also this thread already existed didn't it?

 

It kills me that Jazz is the baby of the group  

 

Also

Yeah weird, it's normally Bumblebee

 

I don't have specific height preferences, but I generally prefer the Animated/Movie style of the Decepticons being larger on account of most of their alt modes being larger more hefty vehicles but with a dose of scale-tinkering so they're not all giants compared to the Autobots.

 

Yes, but now your playing a game of what works not what looks the coolest.

Even the F-16 is 50 feet, you’d have to cut it close to half for it to work. And when you’d be again working towards what works not what looks pleasing.

Speaking visual, for the sake of the live action world, you also have to appeal to the size of ground vehicle parts in robot mode. For most people viewing a car part hanging off of Bumblebee that is double or triple the size of its part when next to a human is more distracting than seeing a plane component that has been shrunk down by half. So the best approach I believe is to meet in the middle. That middle is larger car bots (20-22ft robots from 16 ft cars) and smaller jet robots (60 ft jets into 25ft to 30ft robots). Of course Optimus and Megatron would sit somewhere between 30 and 40 ft.

 

Roughly accurate? And there's all kinds of ways you can cheat to get the right height/bodily dimensions. But when a wheel is the size of a human being, or a four-door-sedan-to-robot's head is, I find it distracting.

That makes Headmasters tough. But who says Nebulons can't be like 3-feet (or one meter) tall? They're not real, their dimensions can be fabricated.

You've also got to figure in what the actual transformation is like. Any roughly accurate version of Starscream and Prime, keeping Starscream as a manned jet and Prime as a cabover, is going to have a pretty big discrepancy in the lengths of their alt-modes, sure. But while Prime's transformation only adds height, Starscream's folds him in half and then just extends him the length of his thighs. So let Starscream be a head taller, and Megatron a head taller than that. It wouldn't be perfect, but I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.

 

Oh totally, but you could figure that out with a scale model....... hmm where can we find models? The toys  !!!!

For the headmasters I would say that when they transform they cannon ball into the chest area. A human sized person could fit into a 20 to 24 foot robot’s chest

For me, as I said earlier, I like larger robots broadly categorized like

Minibots 15ft
Car bots headmasters 20ft to 24ft
Tanks, trucks, and jets 25ft to 40ft

 

Well he was a F-16 in Prime. I think the aligned continuity explained it as their Metal stretching and compressing. The alt-modes were also not necessarily accurate to the vehicle. Starscream for example was probably smaller than an actual F-16, and all the Carbots were huge when in robot mode despite being normal cars.

 

I really disliked that about Bayformers Jazz.

It was the first inkling that he'd be a total chump in the Bayformers continuity.

Perfect.

This is also good.

Personally, I prefer and agree with those who say that a Transformer should have a height that's equivalent to their mass and body area in vehicle mode.

Also, one more thing, regarding an individual character.

I would not have Optimus Prime as the tallest, biggest and strongest of the Autobots.

I loved the approach that Animated used, with several Autobots (such as Bulkhead and Ultra Magnus) being bigger and more powerful than Optimus.

It reinforced the fact that Optimus was as good as he was not because he was mighty or imposing, but because of his heart, his courage, and his heroic spirit.

It's easy to beat the bad guys if you're just as strong, if not stronger, than them.

But you'd look even more impressive if you're not the best physically-imposing hero around, and yet you are still able to defeat bigger and stronger bad guys via using your head.

 

Yeah I thought Prime was an excellent example of meeting in the middle with the sizes.

The car bots looked great in robot mode and added only additional 30% (ha only) of mass (Bumblebee went from a 15ft car to a 19ft robot). And Starscream had a similar approach in the opposite direction.

Arcee was nuts in her mass, but overall I still think it worked really well.

 

sizes fluctuate like crazy on the show.

micromasters(also including target head and powermasters plus robots like Rumble and Frenzy) are meant to be human sized


This probably pushing it a fair bit but its the best I could find.

Smaller legend robots like Bumblebee and Cliffjumper (G1) have been shown to be only slightly taller than a human:



to almost double their height:


next you have the Deluxe characters like Jazz Prowl hound and others like Wheeljack and sunstreaker who are roughly two or three times the height of an average human or roughly twice or one third taller than Bee.


This is a pretty good indicator of the size difference between legends deluxe and voyager scale characters. Also interesting that Jazz comes in at taller than Bee but still slightly shorter than an average deluxe making his movie size surprisingly accurate.

Next up you have the voyagers combiner leaders and higher rank bots like soundwave starscream Motormaster etc these guys are taller but to a less degree with carbots heads coming roughly to about their shoulders. Megatron Galvatron and Optimus can fit into these catergories as well but they can also be allot taller with a standing human barely reaching their knees.



Next size class would be bots like Ultra Magnus bigger than voyagers but only slightly due to his armours bulk:



Jetfire meanwhile is sometimes only a little taller than Optimus:



and sometimes he almost double Optimus's height



And from there you have combiners who roughly scale against transformers the same way humans do:


(This is actually pretty inaccurate since it would make all the parts of Bruticus massive compared to other bots but it's fairly common the cartoon)


Aside from the glaring paradox that's taking place here this is fairly accurate depiction of how transformers should scale to combiners.

Lastly we have Titans who are more or less self explanatory though they too can vary wildly in size being anywere from a very tall bot(or slightly taller than average):



too towering over mountains:



oh and last and by no means least we have planetformers:



I'm pretty sure that covers them all?

 

I want cars, vans and trucks to not mass size-shift when transforming to robot mode.

If you stand a toy in robot mode next to the same mold in vehicle mode, then that is the height difference between their real life vehicle mode and robot mode height. Doesn't matter what size class toy you use, the vehicle mode is the same size its real life counterpart.