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Heights of Tintin characters

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Balthazar
Moderator
#21 · Posted: 13 Sep 2007 17:59
Richard
I tried to find a measurement of Haddock's Lincoln, since Tintin is slightly shorter than it (see The Seven Crystal Balls where they try to put the canvas hood up) but drew a blank.

I believe Haddock's car is a 1930s or 40s Lincoln Zephyr (another Zephyr, by coincidence), but I can't find any height specifications for one of those on the web either. There are plenty of sites giving the measurements of the modern Lincoln Zephyr, but that's a very different car.

I've noticed that it's quite hard to find many pictures in the books of Tintin standing straight. Hergé was so good at drawing people in dynamic natural poses, that Tintin's nearly always crouching, striding or running or something when he's drawn near to a car (or indeed anywhere else). This is a good thing for the books, of course, but it makes it hard for anyone wanting to measure him against something!
SmartTintin
Member
#22 · Posted: 13 Sep 2007 18:02
Balthazar

or did Hergé and his team draw that Ford Zephyr too big?

Good analysis Balthazar! A point to note is that in the previous frame, Tintin is shown walking on the footpath. It is possible that Tintin is still standing on the footpath while he stoops to talk to the driver. So, considering that, Hergé did draw Ford Zephyr correctly and not too big, but even that does make Tintin a bit shorter.
Balthazar
Moderator
#23 · Posted: 13 Sep 2007 18:10
SmartTintin
It is possible that Tintin is still standing on the footpath while he stoops to talk to the driver. So, considering that, Hergé did draw Ford Zephyr correctly and not too big, but even that does make Tintin a bit shorter.

If Tintin's standing on the footpath or pavement in that picture, surely that means he's even shorter than I calculated, or that the car's been drawn too tall by an even greater margin than we thought.
jock123
Moderator
#24 · Posted: 13 Sep 2007 22:35
We may be victims of a degree of artistic license here, which isn't uncommon, where in order to fit two or more characters of varying height into a frame, the artist "moves" the ground around in an unrealistic fashion.
I first became aware of the technique when listening to the commentary for Toy Story, in which John Lassiter explained that, given the huge disparity in height between Woody and Buzz Lightyear, they played fast and loose with "reality", by having them appear in scenes together where they let Woody's legs walk "through" the surface of the table/ floor/ whatever, or Buzz walked above the surface, framing the shots so the audience couldn't see.
Also the scene where one of them (can't recall which, but I think it's Buzz) pushes the crate off the desk, supposedly by bracing their feet against the wall, the shot is again cheated as the width of the desk meant that the character doing the pushing wouldn't have been able to move the crate far enough; in the end he is just sort of levitating above the desk, with his feet well away from the wall...
This doesn't progress the research, but may explain the discrepancy between Tintin, the footpath, the car and the driver (sounds like the title of a film...).
dreamdust
Member
#25 · Posted: 22 Mar 2009 09:33
Hmm...I'm guessing:

Tintin: 163 cm
Haddock: 179 cm
Calculs: 168 cm
Castafiore: 183 cm (haha!)

I don't think Tintin is necessarily shorter than the average height for his age. Since he grows taller as the series progesses, I don't think he has reached his full height yet.
Harry Hayfield
Member
#26 · Posted: 20 Feb 2012 23:30
Taking the base as the picture from Golden Claws (where Tintin and Haddock are crossing the desert), Kids Konnect states that on average camels are seven feet high and so therefore as Tintin and Haddock are the same height in the picture (allowing for perspective) there can only be less than three inches difference in height between them (Haddock the taller)
jock123
Moderator
#27 · Posted: 21 Feb 2012 00:00
Harry Hayfield:
therefore as Tintin and Haddock are the same height in the picture (allowing for perspective) there can only be less than three inches difference in height between them (Haddock the taller)

Hmm… think that tha’s a stretch. You’d have to assume that the camels are identical in height, to make anything of that; additionally having to adjust for perspective as you put, surely means it just wouldn’t possible to arrive at a figure with that degree of accuracy.
It might make sense to say that, were you to be shown Haddock standing next to the camel on a level surface, and then Tintin standing on the level ground next to the camel at the same distance from said camel, that, given a figure of seven feet as an average height, Tintin might be approaching x inched shorter or taller than Haddock; but the data simply doesn’t allow for two camels of unknown height, and an unknown distance apart, on ground that isn’t flat, to be used in such a fashion, to such exacting tolerance.
But the biggest problem comes from the fact that there are many pictures of Haddock and Tintin together without the diversion of a camel, which shows the Captain to be a good bit taller than Tintin – I’d say greater than three inches at a guess – even in Crab itself: look at them as they walk through the Souk.

However, for those wishing to try to do the mathematics, here’s a crumb of information which relates Tintin directly to a measurable object in the real world.

When Tintin holds up the book about weapons in The Calculus Affair, look at the word “Research” in the title.

Using a ruler on a real-world copy of the same book, I see that it is almost exactly fifty millimetres wide from the bottom outer-left corner of the leg of the “R” to the bottom outer-right hand corner of the letter “h”…

See what you can do with that, folks!
NikkiRoux
Member
#28 · Posted: 21 Feb 2012 05:03
Here's something that's occurred to me: Tintin's trousers are called plus-fours because they extend four inches below the knee. Maybe, using the length between his knee and where his trouser legs end, we could estimate the length of the rest of his body.
jock123
Moderator
#29 · Posted: 21 Feb 2012 10:10
NikkiRoux:
Tintin's trousers are called plus-fours because they extend four inches below the knee.

While we call them “plus-fours”, which is used as a generic term for a style of breeches with baggy knees, they could easily be “plus-two” or “plus-six”, or some other length chosen as a matter of taste between a gentleman and his tailor – if Tintin was short for example, a full plus-four might have looked too long,and been taken up.

No, if anything approaching a heightt is to be guaged, it will have to be beased on an actual known measurement of an object compared to Tintin; from that figure, however, it should be possible to estimate the length of his trousers, rather than vice-versa!
Brianna
Member
#30 · Posted: 22 Feb 2012 02:25
jock123:
Using a ruler on a real-world copy of the same book, I see that it is almost exactly fifty millimetres wide from the bottom outer-left corner of the leg of the “R” to the bottom outer-right hand corner of the letter “h”…

See what you can do with that, folks!

LOL! Thanks for the info. I will try this now.

Some time later: After several attempts, I measured his height to be between 125-135cm, which is obviously inaccurate. I think the real book might not be scaled to the proportions of the drawing. Time to find another point of reference! xD

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