Brave (complementary material)

While the Pixar animation Brave was itself properly researched and the archery was done mainly right in it, the same cannot be said from the official merchandise and other complementary material. I combined two pictures in this post, since I don't want to bother you with this crap many days in a row.

Mistakes:

A–picture is some awful little girly *SHINY* sticker ad, and the product includes 'horsies' and other glittering stuff those of us having two X-chromosomes, but not yet 10 years of age are supposed to like. Yuck!

1. The form of the string grip is awful too. It doesn't represent any of the several known grips which have been used historically around the World. This is just a fist around the string and arrow nock going somewhere. And look at the size of those tiny hands, they are almost smaller than her eyes (which are very big, a manga influence which rids popular culture these days)!
2. The bowstring goes OVER her bow arm!!! What in the actual ƒµ¢Í<?!? The maker of this picture has absolutely zero idea how to draw an archer, he or she has not used any reference at all. This is just the kind of ignorant shiny glittering *horsiepoop* which I absolutely hate! "I know how to draw everything, so I don't have to use reference, I just draw it out of my head." If you are too lazy to make a five second Google search before starting to draw (this is of course made with a computer, so the maker cannot excuse that it would take too much time to open the computer), you can as well change your career, from an "artist" to something which requires no use of brain cells, like a telemarketer, doorbell ringing Jehova's witness or a night club DJ.
3. There are other errors, like that the arrow doesn't rest on the bow gripping fist, so she has little control over where the arrow fill fly...
4. ...or the fact that the bow is held horizontally, which is very awkward and useless position...
5. ...and the nock of the arrow is nowhere near the archers face, where it should be...
6. ...or that she doesn't even look where she's aiming while she has already drawn the bow! But it would be frustratingly useless to correct those, as long as the whole form of the archer in this picture is so fundamentally wrong in every possible way. I remain wondering if Merida's dull facial expression in this picture is intentionally telling us: "I have absolutely no clue what I am doing, but I just keep this stupid smile on my face".

B–image on the other hand... I can't decide is it worse or on the same bottom pit as the picture A.
You couldn't get to a lower level in any other way than combining these two pictures. This is so poorly made unlucky attempt at depicting the character and the bow that I cannot continue without pausing to take a deep breath. I understand if many critics have drinking problems.

1. The bow in this picture does not bend. How hard it is to understand the difference between a bow and a slingshot? The former has a rigid string attached to a bending arc, and the latter has a stretching string fastened to a rigid frame. I'm sick of these rubber band bows, which would make better weapons if you'd throw the whole shebang at your enemy, instead of trying to shoot with it. I've drawn a proper curvature for the bow in blue.
2. The maker of this picture (I refuse to call these inferior cheap freelance draughtsmen artists) has succeeded in including two mistakes inside this circle. The archers hand is not gripping the string and arrow properly, the fingers just sort of lay there. Again, could've used some reference there, but no, too lazy to do that.
3. The other one is obvious too, the fletching of the arrow is way too back, since it interferes with the grip and the bowstring. This is actually the worst case of 'wayback fletching' I've seen so far, so, have ironic congrats for that, you the maker of this picture! Merida is holding the arrow from the middle of the fletching. This is so wrong it hurts!
4. The arrow is surprisingly on the left side of the bow as it should, but this is merely a coincidence, since the maker have had no idea of proper archery techniques at all. However the arrow tip weights half a kilogram since it's a solid iron tetrahedron of the size of half the fist. And it is not even located straight ahead of the arrow shaft, it's a little bit off the point.
5. Where on Earth is she looking at? Her head is completely sideways so she can't see at all the target where she's shooting at! Apparently the maker of this picture just had to include the 'pretty female face' in this ad in order to generate more clicks, but it just makes this picture look even more amateurish and downright stupid.
6. The line of sight and line of the arrow point in completely different directions. She would have no chance of hitting that large target which is three meters away, even if the line of the arrow would point anywhere near the target, which it doesn't do.

Good, but still not good:

Usually I would consider the use of hip quiver as a good point in a picture, but in these cases it is on the responsibility of Pixar's character designers, and the praise goes to them. Certainly the makers of these pictures would have drawn Merida with a back quiver, if they could've.

It's such a shame how the makers of these pictures have completely ruined everything which was good about the Character of Merida. She really knew how to shoot quite well in the movie, but in these pictures she is lowered to the level of millions of wrongly drawn archresses with ridiculously childish mistakes.