Tuesday 30 October 2018

How to find good photo reference of archery in China?



I actually got interested after the last post, what kind of results the "Chinese Google" Baidu gives for "archer". Since Google is seriously restricted in some aspects in China. I don't for a second believe that those who can use Google in China couldn't use it to search pictures of archers, but many people might actually prefer Baidu for reason or another. And it's interesting to see what results that search engine gives, if some Chinese person would like to get some photo references for an archer drawing.

And the results are quite surprising.
First I searched with the English word "archer" in Baidu. It gave only images from some archer anime. Not good for reference.

Next I searched with a Chinese word 射箭运动员 which apparently means an archer. It gave photos of Olympic archers. Those are not good for reference if you would like to draw a historical archer, since modern sports bows don't like like traditional bows at all.

After that I used another Chinese word I got from an online dictionary for archer: 弓箭手. That gave a page full of very inaccurate fantasy drawings of archers. Not a single realistic one which could be used as a reference, and not a single photograph. All were these ridiculous game character concept art things.

So it turns out one does not easily found good photo reference of traditional archery in China, at least if you use Baidu! Or then I just don't know the right words to use in a Chinese language search.

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