Size variation among anthro characters?

[Mountaindewandsprite]

Sonic is about 3'3 (plz don't mention his size in 06) in height. Bark the Polar Bear (even though he only appeared in one game) and Vector the Crocodile are 5'11. Depending on the species, does the size of anthros vary or is their an average "mobian" height?

Btw, most of the anthro characters are based off of small animals. Are there any anthros like Vector that are based on large animals?

[Blazey Firekitty]

I've admittedly been influenced by the scale that Jazwares had most of their figures in, but I usually assume that Sonic's size is about average while characters like Vector, Bark and Big are the outliers.

[Diogenes]

Most Sonic characters are around the same age and fairly close in height, and most of the variation seems based in age rather than species, so I would guess there's an average height that most Sonic characters would cluster around when fully grown. It's a little hard to guess what that height would be, though, since most of the characters are teenage or younger. We do have at least two unambiguously fully grown Sonic characters, though; Pachacamac was 3'9, and Vanilla is 4'3. I don't think there's any reason to believe their heights are out of the ordinary, so within a few inches of that range in either direction is a reasonable guess.

There are a few characters significantly beyond that range, but to my recollection they're all pretty explicitly "big guys" (Vector, Bark, and Big, for example). It could go either way on them being simple outliers or on them being of a particularly large species/race/whatever.

[Bowbowis]

To make things easier on everyone I've made a table of all the characters' heights, from shortest to tallest, and other pertinent information. Hopefully this will save people the trouble of running to the wiki every time the need to find something.

Spoiler

Character	Species	Age	Sex	Height
Charmy	Bee	6	Male	70 cm (2’ 3”)
Cream	Rabbit	6	Female	70 cm (2’ 3”)
Marine	Racoon	7	Female	75 cm (2’ 6”)
Tails	Fox	8	Male	80 cm (2’ 7”)
Sticks	Badger	?	Female	85 cm (2’ 8")
Amy	Hedgehog	12	Female	90 cm (2’ 11”)
Tikal	Echidna	14	Female	95 cm (3’ 1”)
Blaze	Cat	14	Female	95 cm (3’1”)
Jet	Hawk	14	Male	100 cm (3’ 3”)
Shadow	Hedgehog	15	Male	100 cm (3’ 3”)
Silver	Hedgehog	14	Male	100 cm (3’ 3”)
Sonic	Hedgehog	15	Male	100 cm (3’ 3”)
Rouge	Bat	17	Female	105 cm (3’ 5”)
Espio	Chameleon	16	Male	110 cm (3’ 7”)
Knuckles	Echidna	16	Male	110 cm (3’ 7”)
Wave	Swallow	18	Female	110 cm (3’ 7”)
Pachacamac	Echidna	52	Male	112 cm (3’ 9")
Vanilla	Rabbit	?	Female	130 cm (4’ 3”)*
Storm	Albatross	19	Male	140 cm (4’ 7")
Bean	Duck	15	Male	157 cm (5’ 2”)
Vector	Crocodile	20	Male	180 cm (5’ 11”)
Bark	Polar Bear	17	Male	181 cm (5’ 11”)
Big	Cat	18	Male	200 cm (6’ 6”)
Mighty	Armadillo	16	Male	?
Nack / Fang	Wolf-Weasel	?	Male	?
Pir’Oth IX	Echidna	?	Male	?
Ray	Flying Squirrel	10*	Male	?
Shade	Echidna	?	Female	?

* This information comes from a non-cannon source (Sonic X, Archie, etc.) and may not apply to the games.

It's late here so I apologize if I missed anyone.

[FriendBot]

Holy shit, Bean's 5 feet tall?!

[Bowbowis]

10 hours ago, Soni said:

Holy shit, Bean's 5 feet tall?!

Apparently. Although, I don't recall him being that much taller than the others in-game. It's probably just the result of Fighters being made before Adventure came along and solidified canon. Back then there were still oddities like Sonic Jam having Sonic and Knuckles' ages reversed and the games having anywhere from six to sixteen Chaos Emeralds of varying color. If Bean were reintroduced today I suspect his height would be retconned into something more consistent with the others.

[Lord-Dreamerz]

11 hours ago, Bowbowis said:

To make things easier on everyone I've made a table of all the characters' heights, from shortest to tallest, and other pertinent information. Hopefully this will save people the trouble of running to the wiki every time the need to find something.

  Hide contents

Character	Species	Age	Sex	Height
Charmy	Bee	6	Male	70 cm (2’ 3”)
Cream	Rabbit	6	Female	70 cm (2’ 3”)
Marine	Racoon	7	Female	75 cm (2’ 6”)
Tails	Fox	8	Male	80 cm (2’ 7”)
Sticks	Badger	?	Female	85 cm (2’ 8")
Amy	Hedgehog	12	Female	90 cm (2’ 11”)
Tikal	Echidna	14	Female	95 cm (3’ 1”)
Blaze	Cat	14	Female	95 cm (3’1”)
Jet	Hawk	14	Male	100 cm (3’ 3”)
Shadow	Hedgehog	15	Male	100 cm (3’ 3”)
Silver	Hedgehog	14	Male	100 cm (3’ 3”)
Sonic	Hedgehog	15	Male	100 cm (3’ 3”)
Rouge	Bat	17	Female	105 cm (3’ 5”)
Espio	Chameleon	16	Male	110 cm (3’ 7”)
Knuckles	Echidna	16	Male	110 cm (3’ 7”)
Wave	Swallow	18	Female	110 cm (3’ 7”)
Pachacamac	Echidna	52	Male	112 cm (3’ 9")
Vanilla	Rabbit	?	Female	130 cm (4’ 3”)*
Storm	Albatross	19	Male	140 cm (4’ 7")
Bean	Duck	15	Male	157 cm (5’ 2”)
Vector	Crocodile	20	Male	180 cm (5’ 11”)
Bark	Polar Bear	17	Male	181 cm (5’ 11”)
Big	Cat	18	Male	200 cm (6’ 6”)
Mighty	Armadillo	16	Male	?
Nack / Fang	Wolf-Weasel	?	Male	?
Pir’Oth IX	Echidna	?	Male	?
Ray	Flying Squirrel	10*	Male	?
Shade	Echidna	?	Female	?

* This information comes from a non-cannon source (Sonic X, Archie, etc.) and may not apply to the games.

It's late here so I apologize if I missed anyone.

Rouge's age is wrong right there, regardless of which source... she should be 18, not 17. Also the normal female doesn't really grow in height much past 15... Maybe Vanilla is just suppose to be extra tall.

[Your Vest Friend]

Okay, so this is sort of a scattershot approach to looking at the heights, but I'll try to work out rough median ranges.

 

Regular characters

16+ [Knuckles, Espio, Wave, Rouge] - 105-110cm. There's a little bit of variation between Wave and Rouge (Rouge is 105cm and Wave is 110cm despite both being 18), so it seems there's give for shorter and taller characters. Wouldn't be surprised if Espio would curb off at 115cm and Knuckles at 115-(possibly)120cm, supported by the clan warriors being fairly tall. Pachacamac isn't much taller at 112cm, but he's also 52 years old and has likely lost height to age. 

14-15 [Sonic, Silver, Jet, Blaze, Tikal] - 95-100cm. Pretty consistent here. Between these two ages in particular, males are 100cm, females are 95cm. What's a little odd is that Sonic's a year older but still the same height as 14-year-old Silver and Jet. The fact Tikal's stats being the same as Blaze shows that time hasn't changed height averages over millennia (as it has in real life). It does suggest a growth spurt happens between 14-16 since the jump from 14 to 16 is so high in comparison to the rate predicted below, so maybe Sonic's a short male and only now jumped, so would be 105cm at 16. Since there's also a clear height difference between the male and female 14 year olds, it must at least at that point, if not before. 

10-13 [Amy, Sticks] - A bit of an undefined area. Amy is 12 and 90cm, which definitely shows a growth decline from 7-8 to 12. Sticks is 85cm and has no given age. If she was 10, it would give a consistent growth rate from 8 to 12 at least, and fit in line with Rouge's height at 18 if the rate is followed. A male character of this age is unavailable, so there's no indication on when the growth spurt really starts. 

<10 [Tails, Marine, Cream, Charmy] - Pretty consistent increase, but male and female are the same height before the teens. Cream and Charmy are both 70cm and 6, Marine is 75cm and 7, and Tails is 80cm and 8. The rate slows down after this point. 

 

Designated Power Characters

Power characters are kind of a rule unto themselves. They certainly don't follow normal character growth, and they don't particularly adhere strictly to species either (otherwise Vector would proportionately be much larger than Storm and Big, who'd be about the same size). Instead, it seems that species can prompt making it a power character (Albatrosses are the biggest birds, Big is likely based on a Maine Coon, the biggest domestic cats, crocodiles are a thing), but the actual specs are more centred around how that character has to fit in with abilities and actions.

Knuckles; The only true power character with a normal character height. He basically has to do most of the stuff Sonic does, so giving him a regular height makes sense, even if it's a bit taller to differentiate.

Storm; More clumsy and less agile than Knuckles by design, but he still has to be fit enough to partake in extreme gear racing while balancing on a board, so he couldn't be excessive. So he's a smaller large character at just 140cm.

Vector; Gameplay aside, he doesn't have to rely on agility as much due to a) Having other weapons at his disposal b ) not really requiring it for the job and c) having Espio to cover the agility. So that combined with real life crocodiles making humans look like Sonic characters allows him to a hefty 180cm.

Big; Big was specifically designed to be slow, laid-back and with a style that was anti-speed. He;s rightfully the largest organic character in the series at 200cm, because he really has no need nor want for agility. 

Robots aren't bound by rules so they do what they like.

 

Outliers (aka ones with non-Sonic game official heights)

Bean and Bark; as it could easily be figured out, in Sonic terms those heights (or Bean's at least, technically) are really out of whack. The thing is that they do fit...in the context of Fighters Megamix, which is what those heights apply to. Considering their ages are fine for the Sonic series, you could scale the heights down by about 33% and it'd fit in better. That'd make Bean 105cm, and Bark 121cm, which seems about right (with Bean fitting the growth curve for Silver and Jet). And before you go on about how small Bark seems there...

He's not much taller than the characters in Sonic the Fighters, so that's not out of line with his portrayal. If you want smoother numbers, you could probably take it down to 120cm. 

Vanilla: Sonic X's 130cm is complete nonsense. However, I wouldn't say "Oh, TMS just didn't care, boo them!". Across her three total appearances in the games,only one predates the production of Sonic X, and Sonic Advance 2 was inconsistent as hell with her height. In gameplay and some ending shots she was not too much taller than Sonic or Tails (so could easily be pinned at 110-115cm), but in other shots she looked literally double Cream's size! And there's no real justification for such a height either since she doesn't have any active role. But good luck getting any height info on her in the future since she's basically just going to get namedrop cameos like Marine. 

[Bowbowis]

2 hours ago, Lord-Dreamerz said:

Rouge's age is wrong right there, regardless of which source... she should be 18, not 17. Also the normal female doesn't really grow in height much past 15... Maybe Vanilla is just suppose to be extra tall.

Heroes' manual begs to differ:

Spoiler

 

[Your Vest Friend]

Heroes manual is wrong, Sonic Channel lists the correct age as 18. 

[Lord-Dreamerz]

3 hours ago, Bowbowis said:

Heroes' manual begs to differ:

  Hide contents

 

Some of those games booklets were just plain wrong, they often seem to have inconsistent ages for characters across the different games.

3 hours ago, VEDJ-F said:

Heroes manual is wrong, Sonic Channel lists the correct age as 18. 

Exactly.

[NintendoSoul]

The characters grow and shrink whenever they need to scale properly next to other, non sonic characters. Happens all the time in Mario games.

[Mad Convoy]

I always figured that Sonic character's heights weren't particularly cared about by Sega and Sonic Team-- they focused more on making sure the characters scale to each other in a believable way for their age group (eg not having Sonic be close to Eggman's height or making Tails look too close to Sonic's height) and used numbers that looked like they fit. I go with 4' 5" for Sonic if I absolutely have to use something, but its generally easier, as I'm sure Sega found, just not to worry or care because its more important that the characters look believably tall for their age and properly proportionate to each other.

I do appreciate Bowbowis's chart though. Its a good reference for those moments when I do need a number to show.

[Your Vest Friend]

Considering that there are legitimate height charts created by Sonic Team, I think they do care about it, and quite a lot. 

[Shadowlax]

1 hour ago, VEDJ-F said:

Considering that there are legitimate height charts created by Sonic Team, I think they do care about it, and quite a lot. 

can i see them

 

i would like to see if they account for things like heels , in the case of rouge. I would also like to see how tall big is to everyone else

[Your Vest Friend]

10 minutes ago, Shadowlax said:

can i see them

 

i would like to see if they account for things like heels , in the case of rouge. I would also like to see how tall big is to everyone else

Kinda finding it hard to find a clear picture of it right now. It's in the "History of Sonic the Hedgehog" book that came out a couple of years ago, and it's in this video at about 12:30 if you want a less-clear look at it. 

Stampii had similar but on an individual character basis which only compared to Sonic. 

[Shadowlax]

5 minutes ago, VEDJ-F said:

Kinda finding it hard to find a clear picture of it right now. It's in the "History of Sonic the Hedgehog" book that came out a couple of years ago, and it's in this video at about 12:30 if you want a less-clear look at it. 

Stampii had similar but on an individual character basis which only compared to Sonic. 

Doesn't account for like heels or like amy's boots Or Silver's quills or ears  and stuff like I had hoped. But it does answer my other question, big is big as shit. The artist in the comic has not been drawing him accurately. Big is the hugo of sonic as of currently. 

[Your Vest Friend]

Admittedly it does seem to show that the basis for heights are inconsistent; for example Charmy's antennae are included in the 70cm height, so he's actually clearly the smallest character, being shorter by Cream by most standard height charts. 

[Your Vest Friend]

Double-post-bump. I've been doing some scanning so there's a clear(er) version of the image I directed to earlier.

Blaze was in the middle in the book, so she gets to suffer. 

[Shadowlax]

Blaze suffers all the time, that is her life now. 

Question, does shadow's quills spike up super hard like sonic's during the super form? Its something I never took the time to nice, given they dedicated time to it on a chart for sonic, i got me thinking

[Your Vest Friend]

Super Shadow's quills don't spike up at all compared to his regular form. Super Silver's back quills do, but it's doesn't add any height to him because the spike up is pretty far along the quill. 

[LukA8]

That picture as a reference makes it even funnier when spin-offs mess up the character sizes, like Sonic Dash or the Olympics.

[Your Vest Friend]

To be fair to them, they also have to consider how the characters will model during gameplay as well as during more idle times. If they stuck by the actual character heights, they'd probably run into issues fitting them with whatever animations and frames they've built for the characters to run off. Big in the last screenshot is a good comparison; since he's not playable in any form, his model is allowed to be more true to scale.