A question of scale

Look at your hand. How big is it in relation to your body height? Ratios vary, but let's say a hand length (not width) is about one-tenth of body height. As for width, my hand is a little over two inches wide. If I were only five foot, probably two inches would be about right. So the ratio would be 2:60 inches. Twenty feet clocks in at 240 inches, so make their hands about eight inches wide.

Not wide enough for the elf to stand, except maybe on one foot. BTW, artists and sculptors know about this sort of thing. Search on "body proportions reference" and you'll get a bunch of useful stuff.

 

Figure someone with a 30" waist, just to stick with round (*ahem*) numbers. The giant hand would need to be somewhere more than half that figure (*ahem*!), so let's just say 20" long. If hand length is approximately one-tenth body height (long hands), then your giant would need to be 200" tall. Since 20' is 240" I'd say you clear that.

I'm sure you already realize you only need to be in the ball park. No one (well, there will always be that *one* reader) will get down to actual proportions, and anyway giants are built different, right?

Here's another thing you can do for your imagination. Find something that is twenty feet tall. A single story house, for example, is in that neighborhood. (I really need to stop) You can then mentally cast the form of a giant up against that, then imagine yourself standing before it. Maybe thirty feet tall would feel more convincing, but maybe twenty would be just right.

 

Hello Ireth.

It would be helpful to know if both characters involved have the same body proportions. Now, sorry but I am going to go all Metric here: Let's say that your small character is 1.6 meter tall (approx. 5'3'') and the giant is 6 meters tall or approx. 20 feet. That means that the MC's height is 0.267 the height of the giant.

If we apply that number to your own height of 1.63 meter (5'4''), and you were the Giant, then the MC would be 44 centimeters tall.

That would make it impossible for you to grab the MC with a single hand. You would be able to kill him with a single kick, though... another possible interaction would be to lift him by grabbing the back of his clothing, or even to stomp fatally on him if you raise your leg high enough.

If the giant is sitting on the ground and slouching, they would be able to have a face to face conversation. It would be a very frightening situation for your MC, that's for sure!

 

Wonderful image. Does the troll's hand really stretch from his knee to the ground? That's what it looks like to me.

And that's part of the thing here. Are a giant's proportions the same as human proportions. Which is another way of saying you can probably get away with making the hand disproportionately large to achieve the effect you want.

 

Ireth, another way to see it would be to imagine yourself as the Elf instead of the Giant.

You have stated that the Giant has the normal body proportions that we have, so we can know exactly how large his hands would be in comparison to your 1.63 meter of height. I don't know what is the length of your hand, but let's say that it's 15 centimeters. That means that your hand is 0.092 of your height.

Then, with the same proportions the 6 meter tall Giant's hand would be 55.2 centimeters long.

What a huge hand, but it's not enough to wrap itself all around you like you were a rat or a toothbrush. You can draw this 55.2 centimeter hand on paper or cardboard, and that would give you a better idea of how the Elf would feel and what kind of interactions could happen between both characters.

There are more dramatic interactions seen in Gulliver's Travels (first between Gulliver and the 15cm tall Lilliputians and later between Gulliver and the 18 or 20 meters tall inhabitants of Brobdingnag), but the difference in size is much larger than the one that you are talking about.

Is the Giant friendly?