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Taken from this lecture by Jennifer Mace (part 2 of a 2-part series on ancient Greek art):

Here is a chart with human proportions, ranging from the normal through the idealistic to the heroic. Sharing here in case it might help anyone out there drawing or converting, given that heroic proportions is the name of the game for most things Warhammer.

But of course, all this silly longshanking is nothing compared to the perfect body shape: Spherical. Rotund, short, without visible knees, and with an enormous beard. Now that is perfection.

I saw something similar a good 15-20 years ago when I was trying to improve my drawing skills, but it was an old DC (maybe Marvel) guide to drawing superheroes. It did have the 9 head reference and emphasis on long limbs, short torso. The style is definitely popular outside of Warhammer. The proportions are used in Overwatch and I've seen similar in various anime as well.

Given that the 3rd guy has a flipping pipe, I imagine that this diagram is something of a classic

I wish GW's heroic scale adhered to these drawings. Seems like their idea of a heroic scale is to make heads, hands and feet oversized, and leave legs too short and arms too long LOL

Proportions have thankfully improved over the years, now they are at least approaching something resembling these drawings, aside from overly big heads, which just keep on persisting

 Flinty wrote:
Given that the 3rd guy has a flipping pipe, I imagine that this diagram is something of a classic

Looking at the image closer it gets weirder.

Normal - Receding hairline, droopy moustache.
Idealistic - Looks like a Golden Age Hollywood leading man.
Fashion - Clark Gable? Maybe not, but he has the moustache.
Heroic - The only that's blonde...maybe Adonis?

Number four is definitely rocking that Greek super macho man ideal. He's got a shotput! And sandles.

Please note that these are heroic proportions for art, not gaming miniatures. The proportions are anatomically correct in all four cases, just increasing rarity in the population.

Miniatures proportions however are widely divergent. If you were to magnify a Cadian, let a alone a Catachan to full scale you would see monsterously disproportioned limbs.

You see the distinction very clearly in GW's own art. Such as when humans are fighting orcs. When the humans are drawn like normal humans, the orcs are drawn to the proportion of GW miniatures, the difference becomes apparent. Sadly I cannot find any of the images I was searching for.

I similarly always wondered looking at the miniatures, how thin and flimsy space marine arms and legs have to be to fit within this armour of theirs.

Some of the proportions on miniatures are intentionally distorted to maintain the same visual effect despite being so small. Certain aspects seem larger/smaller due to optical illusion. There is also the additional factor of scultping technology and material; realistic proportioned weapons, for example, would snap to a harsh glare (though I am among those who feel Warhammer is generally pushing it, but still).

I mentioned this over on the news thread before I noticed this thread existed...

"Funnily enough we call warhammer scale "heroic scale", but I think it's more common in art to go the opposite way, a heroic figure would have a bigger body and longer legs with a similar sized head, getting further away from child proportions and beyond regular adult. Michelangelo's David was one where the head and hands were quite large, though he's more of an exception and it might have been done to accentuate the small stature and youthfulness of David versus other heroic figures. By contrast, Hercules is often depicted larger than normal humans in terms of number of heads."

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Some of the proportions on miniatures are intentionally distorted to maintain the same visual effect despite being so small. Certain aspects seem larger/smaller due to optical illusion.

I think this is a bit of a fallacy, when sculpting smaller it's quite common to increase the head size because supposedly it compensates for the smaller size, but whenever I compare a bobble head model to one more realistically proportioned I prefer the realistically proportioned one at almost all scales.

A good example of this in GW models is the Dire Chasm Vampires. Some really nice looking models, which have similar head and hand size to older GW models but they just grew the bodies so they are actually realistically proportioned and it results in them looking really good.

Even at 15mm scale with historic models, it's very common for sculptors to make the heads massive, but when you see them next to another 15mm model with more realistic proportions they look so much more derpy (at least to my eye, I appreciate that it's subjective).

The bigger issue when going small is if the detail becomes to small to sculpt and paint, but if it can be sculpted and painted I think more realistic proportions are preferable down to, I dunno, maybe 10mm scale where proportions becomes less important.

David was designed to be seen from about twenty feet below and has proportions to look classically perfect from that angle.

Nomeny wrote:
David was designed to be seen from about twenty feet below and has proportions to look classically perfect from that angle.

I've heard that theory and I'm not really sure I believe it (unless Michelangelo said it himself?). It was originally going to be mounted on a pedestal on the Florence Duomo (a lot more than 20ft) and it'd be viewed from a lot of different angles, and because it's only the head that's bigger (not the shoulders or chest) it still looks big headed when viewed from below. Michelangelo also made the artistic choice of having the hands large, one of which hangs at thigh level. So it seems more logical to me that the viewing angle thing was not the reason he did it. Other depictions of David from the same era and other artists also tended to give him similar proportions (minus the big hands).

But I don't claim to be an expert, it's more than 15 years since I studied Renaissance art at school, and I'm not an artist myself by any measure.

 LordofHats wrote:
Number four is definitely rocking that Greek super macho man ideal. He's got a shotput! And sandles.

That's a discus, bro...