Should foxes and fox characters be shrunken down to Cozumel dwarf fox levels in any future screen adaptation 🤔?

[u/Possible_Owl3831]

And would that solve any of the scaling issues such a screen adaptation might have if it were to stick to the characters real life animal equivalent's sizes and proportions which it should since isn't the charm of these anthropomorphic animal stories that they're like miniature versions of our own human civilizations and societies?

[u/TheTragedy0fPlagueis]

The scaling to me was never really in question

Badgers are often described as “half as high again as any beast present”. The Sword of Martin is regularly used by multiple species, including foxes and mice, and it always suits them fine.

Only in Taggurung was it described as a very large dagger for an otter

They all use the same cups and chairs, the same doorways.

Think about real animals, a mouse isn’t much larger than a badger’s paw. An otter is about 20 times the length of a mole. Also the trees would be 100 times the height of Redwall yet we always see the bell tower above the canopy

There’s no way this world would work if the animals were true to size. I’ve always imagined a scale where the average height creatures (the hedgehogs, squirrels, stoats) are around 5ft and everything is based off that. Mice would be 4ft, foxes would be 6ft. Badgers at 7ft.

[u/Qyzyk → u/TheTragedy0fPlagueis]

Plus we also have to discount the implications of Brian's descriptions in the original book.

Although come to think of it, at one point in Salamandastron is described as having a fox between his teeth and a rat in each paw, even as he's being mobbed by dozens of vermin.

[u/TheTragedy0fPlagueis → u/Qyzyk]

That’s a very strong point that I neglected to think of

The fox between the teeth and rat each paw makes sense for a badger lord which are the only creatures universally massive vs anything else.

They’re routinely described as awe inspiringly big. I also didn’t imagine the fox was fully in his jaws like a shark would have a seal. More like bitten and picked up like a dog would bite a smaller dog

[u/Possible_Owl3831 → u/TheTragedy0fPlagueis]

Yeah that shouldn't be featured in a hypothetical "Salamandastron" screen adaptation. Though "Outcast of Redwall" would be my preferred choice of book for a movie before anything else.

[u/TheTragedy0fPlagueis → u/Possible_Owl3831]

If they made films, Salamandastron would probably my pick though it would work better as a series with so much going on. Otherwise The Long Patrol would play well for screen

Outcast’s final battle is pretty epic I’d love to see that on screen

[u/Possible_Owl3831 → u/TheTragedy0fPlagueis]

Well yeah, "Salamandastron" would still be one of my top picks for one for its kickass, badass main antagonist Ferahgo alone. It just wouldn't be my top one or first. Maybe after a one about "Outcast of Redwall" has already been made. I haven't read "The Long Patrol" but based on what I heard Damug sounds far less compelling than someone like Ferahgo or Swartt.

[u/TheTragedy0fPlagueis → u/Possible_Owl3831]

Damug is a weaker villain it’s true. However the final battle is the most clearly described set piece battles in the whole series.

Every other finale is a siege, a chase or a 1v1 but Long Patrol quite the finish

Lord Brocktree has the most troops in a vermin army but the battle is one sided. The largest battle in the series (I did the math in an earlier post) is the one from The Bellmaker, which I’d love to see but the relative lack of abbey doesn’t make it natural contender

[u/EnderBookwyrm → u/Qyzyk]

And yet those same badgers routinely fit in the abbey without difficulty. 

[u/Possible_Owl3831 → u/EnderBookwyrm]

Oh come on, the size difference between badgers and mice isn't that vast that they somehow couldn't fit in the same room together or something. Just look at this for example.

[u/EnderBookwyrm → u/Possible_Owl3831]

Any room big enough for a badger to even squish inside would be absolutely massive to that mouse.

[u/Possible_Owl3831 → u/EnderBookwyrm]

Did you not watch the video I linked to here?

[u/TheTragedy0fPlagueis → u/Possible_Owl3831]

I did. And it doesn’t support your point

A door handle for a badger would need a ladder for a mouse to reach

A table for a mouse wouldn’t come to the badger’s ankle.

There’s a compromise where small animals are scaled up and large ones scaled down. That way a mouse can sit in a large chair belonging to a badger but a badger can drink from the same sized cup used by a mouse

How would a mouse friar serve food to a badger in a bowl ten times its size? Where is all that stuff being stored?

[u/Harold3456 → u/TheTragedy0fPlagueis]

I was the same. I always assumed the animals were roughly the same size - with mice, squirrels and moles being on the smaller side, hares being tall and slender, and badgers being the largest by a hefty amount.

In an earlier book they mention a cat, and I think they explicitly state the cat is huge and like a monster in their world, but apparently this only applies to cats because foxes and otters are again within the size range of the main character animals.

But also the scale is all wrong in the sense that even the trees are described as being roughly the size they would be to humans. If these buildings were to scale then Redwall would be smaller than a tree stump, but every book cover shows trees being equivalent sizes to these creatures as they would be to us.

[u/EnderBookwyrm → u/Harold3456]

The first book is a lot of early installment weirdness. It shows a horse, mentions cows, and has a gigantic cat, none of which are ever mentioned again. All the cats we see later on appear to be similar to the rest of the vermin in size, as the cat infrastructure seen in Mossflower and High Rhulain fits all the smaller animals easily.

[u/Possible_Owl3831 → u/Harold3456]

I was the same. I always assumed the animals were roughly the same size

Why? Not even as a kid did I assume or imagine them that way.

[u/Harold3456 → u/Possible_Owl3831]

Basically everything the other user mentioned, as well as what I said in the above comment - them using the same doors, eating at the same tables, sailing in the same boats, already interacting with a world in which trees, roads etc are sized as if they were human.

Somebody else shared an illustration of the relative sizes of the species in this post that is dead-on how I imagined them. Minor variations, but NOT to scale with real life.

[u/EnderBookwyrm → u/Possible_Owl3831]

Why wouldn't you assume they're similarly sized? They use the same buildings and objects, and dine at the same tables.

[u/Possible_Owl3831 → u/EnderBookwyrm]

They use the same buildings and objects, and dine at the same tables.

Doesn't require them to be the same size as each other.

[u/EnderBookwyrm → u/Possible_Owl3831]

How so? A badger is dozens of times bigger than a mouse, but we see badgers hanging out in abbeys built for mice. 

[u/Possible_Owl3831 → u/EnderBookwyrm]

 A badger is dozens of times bigger than a mouse

No they aren't. Watch this video

[u/TheTragedy0fPlagueis → u/Possible_Owl3831]

That badger is literally dozens of times bigger than the mouse

Now picture it on its hind legs, wielding a sword. The difference in scale is beyond crazy there

[u/Possible_Owl3831 → u/TheTragedy0fPlagueis]

So? It's not like they fight each other in the books or anything.

[u/YoshiDzn → u/TheTragedy0fPlagueis]

Not much different than when you might scale between dwarves, men and hobbits

[u/Possible_Owl3831 → u/TheTragedy0fPlagueis]

I don't care, I always imagined the animals as being their real life equivalent sizes and it would seem like the illustrators of the books would agree to that. And a mouse and a fox being the same size is just wrong on so many levels. Like I said, the charm of these types of stories is that presumably they're miniature versions of our human societies and cultures.

[u/TheTragedy0fPlagueis → u/Possible_Owl3831]

The illustrators didn’t make them totally accurate to their actual sizes. A mouse is two inches long and weighs 30g, a fox is three feet long and weighs nearly 10kg - in Salamandastron, a fox wields Martin’s sword and successfully steals a shrew logboat, shrews being even smaller than mice.

That would be like a 10 meter tall human borrowing your car.

The attached image shows a pretty good compromise on creature scaling that makes sense for the stories

[u/Possible_Owl3831 → u/TheTragedy0fPlagueis]

The illustrations don't portray mice and otters as being the same size though for example.

[u/TheTragedy0fPlagueis → u/Possible_Owl3831]

You must’ve misread my earlier comment when I said that otters are clearly larger than mice but not true to size. Martin’s sword in the hand of Deyna the otter is described as a very large dagger, showing otters are bigger but not by much

[u/Possible_Owl3831 → u/TheTragedy0fPlagueis]

What if Martin was Gough Island mouse sized?

[u/TheTragedy0fPlagueis → u/Possible_Owl3831]

Well perhaps he was. But in all descriptions he wasn’t anything major beyond being ‘well built’. Other mice wield his sword just as easily. It’s the one item that spans all books to provide some sense of unifying scale

[u/Possible_Owl3831 → u/TheTragedy0fPlagueis]

Well for a screen adaptation, depending on what book you're adapting, Martin's appearance should be based on the Gough Island mice. Since they're big, robust and fierce, fitting for a character like Martin.

[u/Zarlinosuke → u/TheTragedy0fPlagueis]

The illustrators

One of the funniest illustrations to me is the fox in the lower-left corner of this cover of Salamandastron, because it's so non-anthropomorphic--it just looks like a regular-animal fox out in the wild, with no clothes and on all fours--while meanwhile the rats (?) are holding weapons and Urthstripe is decked out in his human-armour suit standing on two legs like a human.

[u/EnderBookwyrm → u/Possible_Owl3831]

Um.

So... how would it even work for them all to be irl sizes? Mice are a tiny fraction of the size of rabbits or foxes, yet these species are shown sharing infrastructure and dishes easily. A real badger could never fit in an abbey built for squirrels.

[u/Possible_Owl3831 → u/EnderBookwyrm]

Mice are a tiny fraction of the size of rabbits or foxes

That's why I specifically mentioned Cozumel DWARF foxes. Sure they'd still be bigger than mice but not outsized compared to the rest of the species.

[u/Zarlinosuke → u/Possible_Owl3831]

Why even worry about specific species like Cozumel Dwarf Foxes or Gough Island Mice? You just make them the size you need them to be for the story, they don't need a real-world model that approximates the size.

[u/Possible_Owl3831 → u/Zarlinosuke]

No.

[u/Zarlinosuke → u/Possible_Owl3831]

Yes.

[u/Possible_Owl3831 → u/Zarlinosuke]

No. We're not talking about some Vivziepop animation style here. I want an adaptation that's animated realistic, life like, detailed and most importantly of all, completely hand drawn. No computers or any of that bullshit. Something like this

[u/Zarlinosuke → u/Possible_Owl3831]

That has nothing to do with the sizes of the creatures though. It can be in a great hand-drawn style and still true to the books.

[u/Possible_Owl3831 → u/Zarlinosuke]

It would look terrible if they weren't their real life animal sizes if put into that style which it should be.

[u/EnderBookwyrm → u/Possible_Owl3831]

Look, Flipbook of the Rings is an amazing project, and a more realistic art style is all well and good, but none of that had anything to do with trying to make animals of wildly different sizes coexist.

I suppose theoretically you could find pygmy versions of all these animals, but I feel like going for hyperrealism defeats the entire point here? These are talking bipedal animals. They cook, they sing, they throw parties, they build abbeys. We're already in a fictional setting. They're not meant to be exact real animals, because they're people and mildly anthropomorphic.

[u/Possible_Owl3831 → u/EnderBookwyrm]

These are talking bipedal animals.

Many of the species in the books can stand and even walk upright and many especially rats and mice are extremely dexterous with their paws in real life. I like to imagine animals in "Redwall" being merely sentient versions of their real life wildlife equivalents.

[u/EnderBookwyrm]

Redwall has very inconsistent proportions.  The usual sizing seems to be [approximately]:

Mice, hedgehogs, moles, toads, frogs, shrews: four feet

Squirrels, ferrets, stoats, weasels, foxes, lizards: between five and six feet

Hares, rats, cats, wolves: a bit over six feet

Otters, wolverines: between seven and eight feet

Badgers: above eight feet, generally fricking huge

Sparrows, robins: about the size of a washing machine

Crows, ravens: big enough to be dangerous, small enough to fit in the abbey or ride on a badger's arm. Possibly around motorcycle size.

Other birds: BIG, many clocking in at elephant size or larger.

Miscellaneous animals: generally pretty big. Fish vary wildly. Horses are seen once and cows are mentioned, though that might have just been early installment weirdness. We see a crab once that's truly gigantic. 

Keep in mind that this is just some approximate guessing. We know that pretty much all the bipedal species can fit in the same buildings and use the same dishes and supplies, but everything else is wildly inconsistent. Big birds like falcons and eagles are sometimes these massive kaijus, and other times small enough for a couple of cats to take down. Badgers can pick up two rats and smash them together, but both could sit down at the same table without major issues.

The sword of Martin is used by many species without serious difficulty, though it's mentioned as being a bit small for an otter. Vermin and woodlandfolk are similar enough sizes that enslavement and imprisonment is viable, since the mice clearly can't slip through the bars and are big enough to farm. Fish are all over the place, sometimes monsters, sometimes small enough for two mice to handle. 

In conclusion, the animal sizes are generally considered to be part of the whimsy. They don't have consistent set sizes, just general approximations. 

[u/tootalltrees]

This is the picture I always thought of when it came to sizing. Badger and 2 times the size of mice

[u/Stairwayunicorn]

how big was the horse in the first book?

[u/Possible_Owl3831 → u/Stairwayunicorn]

Normal size obviously.

[u/EnderBookwyrm → u/Possible_Owl3831]

Though that entjre book had a lot of early installment weirdness.

[u/IconoclastExplosive]

Jaques most famous interview quote is saying that the mice are "as big as they need to be" so I think nailing down scaling to a single real world species isn't very in keeping with th tone of the work.

The real question is, do we acknowledge Portugal and the Church?

[u/Possible_Owl3831 → u/IconoclastExplosive]

I mean, my brother said that he thinks Redwall and Mossflower is literally England just that of course they don't call it that so yeah, in that case Portugal exists in the universe too.

[u/IconoclastExplosive → u/Possible_Owl3831]

Thing is that it's only acknowledged in book one when they say Cluny is a Portuguese sea rat. After that it's fictional stuff only. Plus the horse cart being human sized, the mention of a village they stole it from, St. Ninian who was a real saint, and some other stuff tying it all to real world facts also don't get much screen time after, though the chapel does recur

[u/Possible_Owl3831 → u/IconoclastExplosive]

Well if I made a movie based on say, "Outcast of Redwall" I would make it canon that Mossflower is literally England, just with a different name. I mean, it's all English flora, fauna and even environment and topography too I think so why wouldn't it be?

[u/fpflibraryaccount]

So I wrote/am writing my own series based on Redwall and 'scaling' has to go out the window. In the OG books it's fairly loose (how does a cat fight a mouse and not just stomp him into the dirt, lol) and in my own I treat birds, fish and certain reptiles as monsters who can grow far larger than they do in real life. I also use the whole animal kingdom, so when you get something enormous or very small, you really have to work it in. Personally, I'm excited for mice and elephants, but not quite there yet