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About (hyper) weight
a year ago
This isn't related to anything, I was basically just thinking about about how to quantify an unrealistically-large character's weight. It's hard and probably best avoided.
Once a character leaves the bounds of possibility, it becomes extremely easy to drastically overestimate or underestimate how much they weigh without a reference. Flesh is actually pretty dang heavy, but bones, fat, and muscle don't have the same density so they don't weigh the same. For example, I think in my mind "okay, this guy is hyper-muscled, he probably weighs about 1000 lbs (excuse my 'merica)"... but then I have to take a step back. What does the biggest bodybuilder in real life actually look like and how much does he weigh? A little bit of Googling later... is my guy 2-3x that guy? If he was supposed to be bigger than that, my number is off.
For non-humanoid characters, I often have to take a look at the Belgian Blue bull for reference. Those can get up over 3000 lbs (1400 kg), so if I say this character is any less than that while being roughly the same size in skeletal structure, I'm actually back within the realm of reality and I've made a huge mistake.
On the flipside, if I'm just completely winging it, I can end up creating a character that's way too big for the room. "He's about as big as a 1-story house... let's just go ahead and say he weighs 3,000,000 lbs." Uh, not quite, that house is gone now. If this description is attached to virtually any picture, I would be willing to bet it's an overestimation, since your mind goes "big = big number" and no one's going to fact check that. No one's sitting there going "well, let's see, 5 lbs of muscle is approximately this big, so taking the cubic area of that bicep, it should actually be..." Which is probably for the best, otherwise it would be just as hard to overlook as size measurements.
And that's just stuff like Muscle vs Fat. If a character is disproportionate, the calculations get even more wack, since it's assumed that everything that makes up that body part grew with it. This would normally be an average, 170-lb man... but he has a hand that's as large as a guy. How much does he weigh now? Ballpark says 340, but a lot of your hand is bone, so... who knows??? How many density calculations do you want to do?
That's enough hard numbers for the time being. My subject is always apparently made out of either foam or lead, so screw it, we're being as vague as possible.
"His weight is unimaginable (where 'unimaginable' is any weight over 100 lbs)."
Once a character leaves the bounds of possibility, it becomes extremely easy to drastically overestimate or underestimate how much they weigh without a reference. Flesh is actually pretty dang heavy, but bones, fat, and muscle don't have the same density so they don't weigh the same. For example, I think in my mind "okay, this guy is hyper-muscled, he probably weighs about 1000 lbs (excuse my 'merica)"... but then I have to take a step back. What does the biggest bodybuilder in real life actually look like and how much does he weigh? A little bit of Googling later... is my guy 2-3x that guy? If he was supposed to be bigger than that, my number is off.
For non-humanoid characters, I often have to take a look at the Belgian Blue bull for reference. Those can get up over 3000 lbs (1400 kg), so if I say this character is any less than that while being roughly the same size in skeletal structure, I'm actually back within the realm of reality and I've made a huge mistake.
On the flipside, if I'm just completely winging it, I can end up creating a character that's way too big for the room. "He's about as big as a 1-story house... let's just go ahead and say he weighs 3,000,000 lbs." Uh, not quite, that house is gone now. If this description is attached to virtually any picture, I would be willing to bet it's an overestimation, since your mind goes "big = big number" and no one's going to fact check that. No one's sitting there going "well, let's see, 5 lbs of muscle is approximately this big, so taking the cubic area of that bicep, it should actually be..." Which is probably for the best, otherwise it would be just as hard to overlook as size measurements.
And that's just stuff like Muscle vs Fat. If a character is disproportionate, the calculations get even more wack, since it's assumed that everything that makes up that body part grew with it. This would normally be an average, 170-lb man... but he has a hand that's as large as a guy. How much does he weigh now? Ballpark says 340, but a lot of your hand is bone, so... who knows??? How many density calculations do you want to do?
That's enough hard numbers for the time being. My subject is always apparently made out of either foam or lead, so screw it, we're being as vague as possible.
"His weight is unimaginable (where 'unimaginable' is any weight over 100 lbs)."
