Monday 27 July 2015

Halfling with a human bow, or a human with giant bow?


I don't try by trying to find mistakes in these pictures, they are usually just so blatant that they jump to my eyes, irritate me and force me to make a blog post about them. My sincere hope is that I educate people, little by little, to notice these mistakes, correct them and avoid all kinds of errors relating to archery.

So this picture looked good at first, but I just looked it a little longer and noticed a lot of odd things, which can also be called mistakes:
  1. The bow is huge! It's just way too big. Biggest longbows were as tall as the archers themselves, but they were longbows. This is a recurve bow, and recurve bows usually were composite bows, which means that they were made of multiple layers of wood and sinew. In contrast self-bows (like longbow) are made of a single piece of wood, and they have less proportionally power in the same bow length. That's why a longbow which is much longer than a composite bow can be as strong as the other. The recurve bow in this picture is longer than a longbow, and it's a recurve bow. Recurve bows were never that long. It's unnecessarily long, it will need more power to draw it to full length than this woman has, and thus she couldn't harness the full potential of this bow, so the extra length is useless. In fact it only hinders the user. This bow is made for a giant. The proper length for this kind of bow is drawn in white for comparison.
  2. The handle is thrice as long as it needs to be. All the extra length in the handle part make the bow less bendable, and thus decreases its power. Not good.
  3. The fistmele is too big too. In longbows the fistmele should be the height of a closed fist plus an upright thumb. In recurve bow though it should be shorter, since the handle goes back at the string.
  4. There are some hand length of useless space in both sides of the nocks of the bow. It has no use if its behind the bowstring.
  5. Maker of this picture has drawn some leather bracers on this womans arms, but they are not meant for archery, they are just the clichéd fantasy leather bracers every fantasy (and "historical") character must have, no matter the profession and task at hand. A proper archer's wrist bracer should be the other way around, so that the attaching "mechanism" doesn't interfere with the bowstring.
  6. The quiver is not only at back (where it shouldn't be), but its also behind the wrong shoulder. How is she going to get the arrows from there with her right hand?

Good:
Hmm... not much archery related, but at least she's not overly sexualised fantasy character. A pretty clichéd brown leather and green hooded cape "wood elf" fantasy attire though. And the bow of course, female characters only use bows.

4 comments :

  1. An unbelievable blog. This blog will indisputably be definitely recommended to my friends as well.

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  2. thanks for such an informative post. Archery is a good recreational sport and it can help to shape the mind and the body positively. So we are here to guide and serve Archery in Pakistan with skilled and experienced coaches.

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  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  4. Some people mistakes and cannot handle a bow effectively, biggest bows are long enough to make archers uncomfortable. That is why it is important to read more and find out how to get the best bow for your needs.

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