Creature Suit Analysis - Part 6 - Comparative Anatomy

[Drew]

Not necessarily. First of all, the clearest shot of the foot in frame 61 is a perfect match for the track cast. This alone, however, cannot connect the 2. But we can confirm the foot length using some photogrammetry. We know the foot length relative to the frame height and if we knew the distance from the camera for a given frame we can estimate the arm length. If we know the arm length we have the foot length. There are several methods for determining the distance from the camera that require knowing the height of the figure. All we have to do is assume BH was in the suit (which you do don't you?), then use his known height to determine the distance from the camera, or use his height directly to measure the arm/foot. There's also some geometric methods for determining distance from the camera using the trackway. I won't bother getting into using Patty's step length of 41" as another measuring tool. I do agree, however, that we need access to an uncropped version of the film to demonstrate this formally, otherwise, I doubt you'd accept the methodology.

You are a mind reader GF.

Another question for you and Bill.

Are you comparing whether a human could be of the size of the figure shown in the Patty footage? or are you comparing whether a human could fit inside of the Patty costume?

[Bill]

Gigantofootecus:

Thank you for your appraisel of my methodology. And we should keep in mind, my calculation of armspan to height ratio was indeed specifically a feasibility study of a human in a suit. The ratio study was thus for such a human.

True armspan measurement of any living primate is the length from shoulder socket to fingertip, doubled, plus width of shoulder socket to shoulder socket across the back.

Assuming the PG figure is real, for the moment, it's shoulder socket to shoulder socket measure as indicated in the film appears widen than a human, and this would further increase the final armspan measure of such a living creature. That increase would then result in an armspan to height (ASH) ratio even higher than what I calculated, and your estimate of 1.28 may well be reasonable under such circumstances.

Where we have a discrepency is that a human mime in a suit "cheats" this measurement (armspan measure) somewhat as long as the arms generally hang downward. So the human's lesser width of back (shoulder socket to shoulder socket) measure doesn't show if the outer arms and deltoid area are somewhat padded and the arm is kept hanging generally down. The outer "creature" arm appears to hang straight down, while in fact, the inner "human" arm actually angles outward somewhat as well as downward.

This "cheat" fails if the human mime raises the arms to be fully extended sideways to create a true outstretched armspan, and the "creature" arm apparently shrinks, when the real shoulder socket of the human no longer can "cheat" where it is.

But that did not occur in the film, so we cannot say for certain whether the shoulder socket is in the "human" inner position or the outer "real Patty" position.

You are correct in your astute observation that by requiring the human arm to angle down slightly to appear hanging straight down at the creature arm/shoulder width, that angled human arm would indeed be slightly forshortened.

Regretfully, we apparently don't have a true near orthographic back view of Patty (that I know of) to precisely align the human shoulders to Patty's shoulders and see exactly how much forshortening the human arm might require to angle outward.

Additionally, the film does not show us the precise curling of the fingers of Patty's hand, so I had to approximate where the enlarged mime's hands needed to go. If anything, I may have errored to caution and the human may arguably need to be even more expanded to fit properly, if Patty's fingers are substantially curled in that frame.

With either condition (or especially both) it may be sufficient to further enlarge the human more (to put the human hand in Patty's hand) and then the human legs might need additional shrinking to fit into the knee and foot of the Patty figure, as you noted.

If so, it further reduces the percentage of humans who would be anatomically capable of wearing a suit to appear as Patty, with hands in the Patty Hands, and the eyes, knees and feet aligned.

Bill

[Guest Jack]

Bill, herewith is a CAD measurement of Patty in frame 72. Using 14.5" as the length of the left foot, I scaled the photo, with aspect ratio locked, so that the foot actually dimensions at 14.5". That puts the rest of the photo to scale. Notice that the left foot and all measurement points are very near the same plane so perspective should not be a problem and these dimensions should be fairly accurate. I've noticed that your "H" figure has one arm slightly longer than the other, about 1.25" according to my CAD measurements of that graphic (scaled to 6'2" tall), and the shoulder width is (approximately) just under 24". Again, according to my CAD measurements of Patty, her shoulder width is 27.64" (again approximately). Measuring her arm & hand from the estimated shoulder joint and adding half the width of her shoulders, then doubling that sum, I come up with a 93" total "wing spread". Adding the 1.25" for the short arm and another 3.5" for shoulder width brings the 80.22 WS of figure "H" to about 85.25" or about 8" shy of Patty's WS dimensions. Not sure if this means anything. Your figure must fit inside a Patty costume, so maybe it's about right. I've shown all my work and the methods used....maybe I did something wrong????

Any way, for what it's worth............

Edited January 24, 2008 by Jack

[Bill]

Jack:

Curious about the Poser figure having one arm longer. Might have some aspect of the body not fully neutralized as perfect straight up and down, since I "unfolded" him from the Patty pose, which was fairly contorted.

Just curious, in your drawing of Patty, how did you arrive at the angles of the bends" Myself, looking at the diagram, would wonder how much bend is in the torso to thigh, and thigh to lower leg, so I'd know how much to unbend them for the straight distance?

Bill

[Guest Apeman]

I'm not sure why Apeman never mentioned that some estimates for Patty went well beyond 1.14.

I forgot that's all. Too busy at the moment to reread the old threads...

Word of warning that many forum members don't trust these methods to accurately derive the body proportions.

True enough but for some of us it has nothing to do with trust; is about science, methodology, anatomy, statistics, and standard issues of measuring error. :bonk:

There's also no consensus what constitutes "beyond human range".

But that doesn't really matter because there is data on all these measurements, it's just hard to find.

Patty's foot length is 14.5"

In actuality, one (?) of the impressions everyone but Yetifan ( ) assumes the figure left in the ground was that size, but again there is variability and no good standard or study I'm aware of that shows a 14.5" foot will leave exactly a 14.5" track. But clearly this is a reasonable estimator which provides a logical and believable result, so I have no beef as long as we all realize it's imperfect and recognize it's limitations for deriving other measures.

Not trying to pick a fight or anything, you know I'm fully with you in spirit.

Apeman

[Guest Jack]

Jack:

Curious about the Poser figure having one arm longer. Might have some aspect of the body not fully neutralized as perfect straight up and down, since I "unfolded" him from the Patty pose, which was fairly contorted.

Just curious, in your drawing of Patty, how did you arrive at the angles of the bends" Myself, looking at the diagram, would wonder how much bend is in the torso to thigh, and thigh to lower leg, so I'd know how much to unbend them for the straight distance?

Bill

Bill, I had to go back and review my work (I first worked on this a year ago). Everything about these measurements is a lot of guess work. The angle Patty is to the film plane makes a difference in those measurements. I estimated 45 deg., but a year ago Gigantofootecus said he estimated her angle at 40 deg. (if I recall correctly). Just five degress in this angle changes her height measurements (as shown in the graphic below). The angles in the leg would also change depending on the angle she is to the film plane. The constant would be the arm length, since it is vertical (or nearly so) the angle to the film plane would not change the arm length. The length of the line from spine to shoulder would change some.

My gut hunch is that the height measurement is probably exaggerated for several reasons. I think it is reasonable to assume there was some slippage of the foot on the wet ground (mud or sand) causing the track to be slightly larger than the foot. If the foot is actually 14" then the photo would have to be scaled down slightly. Also my "yellow line" includes the sagital crest and any hair thereon. And I had to estimate the heel bottom since it blends into the surface she's standing on. If the foot actually measured 14" then Patty's height would be 73.71/14.5*14=71.17" and WS would be 93/14.5*14=89.79".

Back to your question. I reasoned that if Patty were standing up straight (as against a wall) that the yellow line would be perfectly vertical. What I did was to follow her angles beginning with head tilt, bend at the waist, a short vertical line at the buttocks then follow the leg angles as closely to the estimated bones locations as possible. If you look closely at the leg, I've placed white dots at the estimated hip joint, knee and ankle. If a line was drawn between those dots, they should closely match the angles in the yellow line. There is nothing "exact" here. It is mostly eye placement (but I have a good eye) and I used my own body for reference. The actual angle will be different than the perceived angle on the film plane due to Patty's angle to the film plane.

Am I making sense? I'm not nearly as skilled at verbalizing my thoughts as you are. This is all pretty soft, but does point out she is not 8' or 7' or???? but much closer to 6'-1"+- (and likely minus).

Edited January 24, 2008 by Jack

[Bill]

Drew:

Apologies for missing your question:

My comparison was specific to the idea of whether a human could be put inside the patty figure, as a feasibility study one would do if planning to build a suit.

Jack:

Thanks for the aditional info on your CAD process. I think I get it more clearly now.

And my own informal estimate from trying to scale from the footprint measure and the shown foot bottom, is the figure stood somewhere betwen 6' and 6'6" .

Bill

[Guest Jack]

Jack:

Thanks for the aditional info on your CAD process. I think I get it more clearly now.

And my own informal estimate from trying to scale from the footprint measure and the shown foot bottom, is the figure stood somewhere betwen 6' and 6'6" .

Bill

There is a way to get it down very close, Bill. I only know what has been said here about your software, but it sounds like you might be able to use it to determine Patty's erect height. The 64.5" dimension of Patty's walking height in my CAD measurements, is quite accurate (photo is exactly to scale and no angles to contend with). Can you place a model directly over Patty in this frame, same size as Patty (scaled to 64.5"), then stand that model erect without changing the scale, then measure the model in that erect positiion?

If Patty is about 6'1"", I can see her profile height being lowered to 64.5" in that crouching position. That's a 8.5" drop. But a 13.5" drop (from 6'6") seems extreme to me.

Edited January 25, 2008 by Jack

[Bill]

Jack:

Which frame are you referring to. A image copy of it might help, or frame number.

Thanks,

Bill

[Guest Jack]

Jack:

Which frame are you referring to. A image copy of it might help, or frame number.

Thanks,

Bill

Frame 72 is the frame I used with TurboCAD Pro. v12 to measure Patty. Copy herewith.

[Bill]

Jack:

I didn't have this frame in my group, but I've saved it out and will plug in my human later tonight to see how it measures out.

Thanks,

Bill

[Bill]

Jack

Running my human model through the film frame you supplied, first posed similatly, and then unposed upright in a neutral posture, and then setting a scaling bar to about 6' (72") tall for the upright figure, yielded an apparent height of 64" for the figure when bent over walking.

I did have a bit of trouble getting the feet to angle correctly. Seems the software has some limiters on movement range. So there may be an inch or so discrepency there.

You're welcome to add anything to this image from your CAD capabilities.

Bill

[Guest Jack]

Jack

Running my human model through the film frame you supplied, first posed similatly, and then unposed upright in a neutral posture, and then setting a scaling bar to about 6' (72") tall for the upright figure, yielded an apparent height of 64" for the figure when bent over walking.

I did have a bit of trouble getting the feet to angle correctly. Seems the software has some limiters on movement range. So there may be an inch or so discrepency there.

You're welcome to add anything to this image from your CAD capabilities.

Bill

Looks to me that Patty is, indeed, about 6'-1"/ 6'-2" including sagital crest. Still room for minor error, but very close.

Thanks, Bill.

[Guest Lyndon]

Interesting posts Bill/Jack. Thanks.

[Guest longtabber PE]

Looks to me that Patty is, indeed, about 6'-1"/ 6'-2" including sagital crest. Still room for minor error, but very close.

Thanks, Bill.

You are going to probably find the actual size of the film subject is substantially smaller than 6-6.1 and this also can have an affect on the aspect ratios of the arms to trunk and maybe the ratio of leg. I cant give an accurate "guestimate" but based on my experience- you are looking at a film subject somewhere between 5-8 and 5-10.

I'll give you the short laymans version but as one CAD operator to another- if you want the techno version, we can take it offline to assist you in your further analysis.

The problem is between plane geometry versus Cartesian geometry. A picture is a plane geometry image of a 3 D object ( unless you are using multiple camersa, stereoscoped images etc- but thats not the case here)

Its no different than a map ( and everyone who has ever been in the military had this beat into them in map reading) which is a flat representation of an elliptical globe ( the earth) so there must be a GM angle ( the aspect ratio of distortion) to convert the compass readings ( the cartesian geometry) to be used on the map ( and vice versa)

This image distortion almost always distorts the 3 d image to the Long side with the exception of object at an angle to the lense which depending on their orientation can also shorten them because the plane image cannot account for "depth" in an included angle.

The only way to get a bullet proof dimensioning of the film subject would be to have known reference points ( linear) from lens to post subject ( 2 will do, 3 is better and 4 is wonderful)- then you have to know the subjects exact positioning between these coordinates- develop the X,Y and Z axes. This is tooling geometry and R&D 3D modeling 101.

Without those knowns- all else is guesswork ( good approximations- but still with a large range)

I've never done a GD&T analysis of the film ( only because I never thought about it and in reality, it cannot be done because of the lack of true coordinates) but after seeing your scaling- I have to say that you have done as good and professional a job as can be done and I'm impressed by it.

So, if you are doing a 1 D analysis and coming up with 6-6.1- then accounting for plane distortion ( which there isnt a standard equation because there are too many varibles) then the actual film subject is going to be somewhere ( estimated) 3-5% smaller in reality.