Avatar cosplay

This time reviewing archery of some Avatar cosplays I came across from the Internet. No more Avatar related stuff for awhile after this, I promise.
This first one should really use a real bow. This is a stick with a string. It obviously doesn't bend since she cannot present a full draw. But what would be the point anyway, if she doesn't have an arrow? The leather bracer is on the wrong arm too. Did Na'vi use sandals by any chance?

How did they get leopard print in Pandora? I don't think leopards live there. And what's with those flip flops? The bow is again just a stick with a string, not a reall working weapon. Arrows are missing again. And that's an uncomfortable place to wear your knife!

 I always appreciate good body paint over printed leotards. What I would also appreciate is using a straight arrow. This is a branch taken out of a bush when lining into Comic-Con. Please buy a wooden dowel from a hardware store next time, doesn't cost much. Sideways shooting is also bad.

This seems like a real photographer took it, maybe not the best one, but someone who really hobbies it with a real camera and all. Sadly the bow is horrible, and even more horrible is the way she's holding it. she should've grabbed the bow one fist width higher. This is really bad for the wrist too. The drawing technique is different from the Na'vi of the film.

What's with this leopard print again!?!
This bow is a cosplay bow, cannot shoot arrows very far. The usual mistakes of cosplay bows apply here: handle and mid part are too long and unbendy. She's holding the arrow between the fingers of her bow hand, which is very bad. That will hurt a lot when the arrow is released. Or would if the bow would have any power. Which it clearly doesn't since she only use the tiniest amount of strength of her fingertips to draw the bow in this photo. The drawing technique is different from the movie and she's shooting right handed unlike the Na'vi.

I saved the worst technique last. From the same photoshoot than the previous picture comes this monstrosity. The bowstring goes OVER the bowarm here. That is wrong on so many levels I can't bring myself even to begin the sermon all over again. I've talkerd about it many times before, this is one of the worst mistake you can do. Usually I see it depicted on drawings, rarely if ever by real people, since it will hurt a lot when you release that string and it hits your forarm. But then again this cosplay bow is not meant for shooting anyway and doesn't hold any real power. Sideways shooting is wrong anyway. Suddenly she's left handed for this photo, mirrored image perhaps?

Avatar merchandise and fan-art

By Googling images of Avatar again for the re-review I came across a bunch of toys, fan-art and cosplay related to it. Most of it depicted archery and bows very poorly. I thought it could provide some fun reading, so here they are: Avatar merchandise and other descendants!

The first two pics above are of toys (or action figures = toys for adults, but not "adult toys"). You can rearrange their limb positions, and you should do so, since they are both horribly wrong. The first one on the left holds the bow sideways, even though it is in drawn shooting position. The hand has been put to grab the string over the arrow. Nope.

The second one on the right has two bows at the same time! Or then the bow has four limbs in an X-pattern! In either case, really NOPE! The string arms elbow should also be higher.

This manga-ish fanart drawing is right handed, even though all Na'vi are left-handed in the film. But that's not the biggest concern here. This Na'vi also uses a kind of Mediterranean grip (unlike all Na'vi in the film), but the string goes only under the index finger. No, it should be held with three fingers (maybe two in Na'vis case, since they only have four). The arrow doesn't seem to be nocked on the bowstring at all, and the fletchings are way too back since they touch the string hand. The arrowtip is too large and it's attachment looks non-secure. It looks also blunt. By the look of the shadow of the arrow, that arrow is floating on the air and not resting on the bowhand of the archer.

This sculpture by Emma Joyne is apparently made from rice crispies, which puts to shame all the contestants on Nailed It! Incredible job really. But the bow is really strange. Na'vi in Avatar have very long bows, and they certainly do not curve this much. And neither do real bows. When making a bow short it is often good to make it recurved so that the siyahs (end of the bowlimbs) turn outwards from the bow. That's how it can be overdrawn like this without the bowstring slipping off the nocks. Of course that's only a side product of a recurve bow (primary reason is to make a bow stronger), but it works like this nonetheless.
This Na'vi also holds the bowstring only by the last bones of her digits, and this tells that the bow is not very powerful at all. A more powerful bow would need the fingers curved more tightly around the string, not in a fist of course, but a little more than this.

This drawing shows a Na'vi in a very strange position for shooting. The arrow is too thick and heavy for her and that bow, it's tip not attached properly, but asymmetrically. The arrow is held between the fingers of the bow hand, which is always wrong. The bow is bends too much at the end of the limbs and not enough elsewhere. The string would slip off the nocks even though it is unnecessarily attached to six points instead of the needed two.

This bow is again very different than the ones used by Na'vi in Avatar. It is much shorter, but in Earth it would probably be a working bow. The arrow is on the left side of the bow, like is usual in European archery, but the Na'vi use in on the side of the thumb. This Na'vi/Avatar is also right handed, unlike Na'vi in the film. The fingers of the string hand are not tight enoughly secured around the arrow, it would fall off the string. The Na'vi here also aims with the arrow close to the eye, which is both unnecessary, and the Na'vi never do it in the film, they shoot much lower, below the chin level. This arrowtip is also way too large.

This bow is horrible, it has angles that it shouldn't have and it doesn't bend. Looks like it is just a stick with a rubber band attached to it. Beginner's drawing mistake regarding bows.

Avatar revisited

In continuation to my update of the archery review of Hunger Games, I decided to re-review James Cameron's Avatar, since that blog post had already got recent comments criticising my critique of it. I'm always glad that my blog posts stir comments, so keep them coming! Here it is for this time:

Avatar (James Cameron's)

This is a shortened version of the blog post from five years ago I did concerning archery on James Cameron's Avatar (2009). Nothing of importance is removed. You can read the original blog post here.



Avatar’s archery is depicted all wrong.

Mistakes:

1. The beginners bow grip mistake, holding the arrow with an index finger. It keeps there without holding if you’re calm, and this only hurts your hand, damages the fletching of the arrow and can effect the flight of the missile.


2. This string grip is reversed. The moviemakers apparently thought this would look more “alien” to us, but it looks stupid. It is impractical and unnecessarily hard form, which no bow hunting people (on which the Na’vi are based) have ever used on Earth, because it’s just not good. This hand just shouldn’t be upside down.


3. The string should go here where this circle points, close to the face of the archer. Now the bow is way overdrawn, since the string is about half a meter back from the face. This makes aiming much more difficult, since the end of the arrow is not close to the archers eyes.


4. The fletchings of arrows in this movie are made either from feathers, or from insect wings. That is not a mistake, since fletching can be made of different materials (although feathers would be best), but the number of feathers on these arrows are. Based on the screencaptures I can only see two feathers (or bug wings) in the arrows. An arrow needs three feathers in order to rotate around itself in three-dimensional space, after releasing of the missile. This rotation makes the aim more accurate, two feathers don’t do anything.


5. The distance between bows arc and string, called fistmele or brace height, should be the length of the archers fist and a protruding thumb (thumbs-up-hand). This bow is way overcurved, since the fistmele is as long as Neytiris entire forearm! That is the reason behind the mistake in point 3. I’ve drawn there a longbow with good proportions for scale.

Some of the comments were disagreeing with my criticism, and here they are (some dissected into several parts for clarifying different arguments):

Freeyutube: "But using only two fingers should work fine also (we can read that medieval english archers used only 2 finger to draw their longbows)."

No, medieval English archers mainly used three fingers to draw their bows, not two. This is a popular misconception spread around in history books and populistic publications that do not check their sources. Most pictorial evidence from the middle ages show three fingered grips and there are historical sources to tell this is the way they shot. A powerful war bow benefits from the use of the third finger, and it would be disadvantageous to use two fingers to draw it.

Freeyutube: "And about using a "reversed grip" with the arrow on the usual side of the bow, the russian Seregedel's school shows it is feasible."

Yes, I've seen that video of Iza Privezenceva shooting with a reversed grip (which I will discuss in a separate blog post), but there has to be a reason why they didn't do it historically. There is close to zero evidence that this technique would've been used historically. If it was somehow better surely it would've been used at least somewhere. It is entirely possible to practise yourself to be good at this technique, but it doesn't mean it would be better technique than some other, or that it would've been used historically somewhere. I think this technique is heavily related to the use of back quiver, since it's difficult to draw arrows quickly from the back. Maybe the Russian woman use this technique to somewhat counterbalance the back quiver hindrance. When really the solution would be to use a hip quiver or when wanting to be extremely quick, to hold the arrows in the hand while shooting.

Matthew: "Just because you don’t like the way it looked and haven’t done your research, doesn’t mean that method wasn’t used. If you do your research you will find that several cultures throughout history have used this method for war and hunting. If you reverse everything in the picture to show right handed shooting you will see that the placement is a lot more correct then you realize."

I have done my research, thanks for asking. The reverse grip method is not well documented anywhere in the World. There are few sketchy pictorial pieces that might or might not depict that, and I will discuss them in a later blog post. If it was done somewhere historically, it must've been so insignificant an instance that we don't know much about it. More probably it wasn't done in any significant scale, since it's unintuitive and doesn't offer anything that a regular grip couldn't. If you know some evidence that reverse grip was indeed used by "several cultures throughout history" "for war and hunting" please show me the evidence. Pictures would be nice. But I don't think this evidence exists. If it does, I'm more than happy to correct myself. It's not that I would be preaching the ultimate truth, I just look at the evidence and make deductions based on that.

Matthew: "About the fletchings you say it needs 3 fletchings to fly properly but they only used 2 and that is completely native style, and the avatars are more like natives on steroids if you will. You are focused on the European style archery and are closed minded to other styles both historical and current."

It is indeed true that some arrows were made using only two feathers for their fletching. In worldwide scale this is really rare, but for example some native American peoples did use two fletched arrows, you are right in that. However their arrows are usually fletched a bit differently than the CGI ones used for Na'vi in the film. In Avatar, the two fletchings are straight opposite of each other, and form a flat surfice, they are not curved at all. When actual native Americans (for example Cherokee) did their arrows with the two-fletch style, they often curved the feathers helically around the arrow shaft, and/or formed the feathers very differently than this. I will make a blog post of those in the future too.

Arrows in Avatar have two fletchings, forming a two-dimensional plane. While this is possible to do and the arrows will fly of course when shot from a bow, it would be more beneficial to have either three fletchings, or the two fletchings turned helically around the arrowshaft like in the third picture, ot cut differently from the feathers like in the fourth picture. The photos represent some Native American (Cherokee) style fletchings.

Matthew: "You have drawn a longbow there but not all cultures used the longbow like the bow that the chief that have his bow to Navi when he died is similar to a horse bow there is even proof of some South American style bows made that way."

I only drew there a long bow, not meant to be "the English/Welsh/European Longbow". It is there only to show that the fistmele of the Na'vi bow is huge. But there I have actually made a mistake by looking at the picture. I thought five years ago that in this picture the bow in undrawn. But now when I look it closer I see that the arrow is on the string and while Neytiri doesn't draw the arrow and string back with her string hand, the bow is still drawn to a degree, and she just holds the arrow there with her bow hand. This can be seen by the fact that the bowstring makes an angle at the arrow nock, which I didn't notice before. This unproves my criticism of the too big fistmele, since we can see from other pictures that the fistmele in this bow is in the limits of possibility.

Upon closer inspection I noticed that the bow is in a semi-drawn position, the string making an angle at the nock of the arrow (strengthened with a red line).

But now when inspecting the bow again, I want to talk about another point regarding to it. This is the ceremonial bow of the Na'vi, owned by Neytiris father, until she inherited it from him. It is different from the regular Na'vi bows by the fact that it has these blue blade-like objects stuck in it. From the picture above you can see that the bow limbs are bifurcated so that the blade-part goes between the halves of the limb. The bowstring is then split into two near it's end and both ends are attached to the bifurcated bow limbs.

This design is absolutely ridiculous. There is no point of making a bow like this. It might look cool to some modern viewers, but this whole construction would make the bow weaker both in shooting power and in integral strength. Also a lot heavier with those large blades, and more cumbersome and difficult to carry around. I admit it's a ceremonial bow, but it's been seen used for shooting in the film, so it is clearly also intended for hunting/combat, not just as decoration.

There's a reason blades were never attached into bows. Bows are delicated weapons, if they are used to hit things they might break. That's why archers usually had a back-up weapon in case they got into close combat or otherwise couldn't use their bow anymore. In Europe that usually was a sword, dagger or an axe, could've been something else in pre-Columbian America, on which the Na'vi are based. Anyway, nobody in history used their bows to hit things, since the bows could break, and there were more useful things to hit people with than bows. So blades were never attached to bows anywhere in the world.

Integrating these huge blades in the centre-line of the bow has resulted in the bow limbs being cut in hald, since they have to bend and travel through the blades. That makes the bow limbs structurally weaker, they might break more easily, and it also diminishes the power of the bow. Attaching the string becomes extra hard, since it has four nocking points instead of just two, and a bowstring needs to de detached when the bow is not used, since otherwise it will strain the power out of the bow in the long run.

So, I like to present the updated version of my criticism of the archery in Avatar as follows:

Mistakes and updates:

1. The beginners bow grip mistake, holding the arrow with an index finger. It keeps there without holding if you’re calm, and this only hurts your hand, damages the fletching of the arrow and can effect the flight of the missile.


2. This string grip is reversed. The moviemakers apparently thought this would look more “alien” to us. It is unintuitive and unnecessary form, without much precedence in the real history of the World, although some modern archers have emplyed this technique more or less succesfully.


3. I originally draw this circle here to point where the arrow is traditionally drawn. However an overdraw isn't always a mistake, and longer arrows can indeed be "overdrawn". Neither does the anchor point of the arrow be near the eyes, it can really be anywhere.


4. The fletchings of arrows in this movie are made either from feathers, or from insect wings. That is not a mistake, since fletching can be made of different materials (although feathers would be best), but the number of feathers on these arrows is unusual. Based on the screencaptures I can only see two feathers (or bug wings) in the arrows. Most arrows have three feathers giving it a good spin. This rotation makes the aim more accurate. Two-feathered arrows however do occur in the real World, but they are rare and often times contructed differently than these.


5. The distance between bows arc and string, called fistmele or brace height, should be the length of the archers fist and a protruding thumb (thumbs-up-hand) for a longbow. For recurve bows this can be greater. I originally misinterpreted the image so that I though the fistmele was way too big. It's actually not.
6. The Na'ci ceremonial bow has huge blades stuck right in the middle axis of it, splitting the bow limbs in half. This design, while it might look cool, is highly impractical and dminishes both the bows integral strength and it's shooting power. There is no reason anybody (human or alien) would ever construct a bow like this.

With this I will close this case for now. Have a nice day everybody and thanks for your comments!

Avatar (James Cameron's)

Now is the time for the most highest-grossing movie of all time (if not adjusted to inflation, otherwise it loses it’s title to Gone With The Wind, a film made 70 years before this one), a movie which is basically a computer animation with some added human cameos, which stole it’s plot from Pocahontas and it’s visual milieu from Bug’s Life and Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind, and which would not be the highest-grossing movie of all time without the newly introduced 3D-technology back at 2009. This is of course the famous Avatar (not to be confused with Avatar: The Last Airbender), which uses the infamous Papyrus as it’s title font.

But don’t get me all wrong, I actually enjoyed the movie, because of the (unintended?) visual similarity to Bug’s Life and Morrowind, which I love both.

Avatar’s archery is though depicted all wrong.

First of all, all the Na’vi (the blue super tall humans with tails, elf ears and slightly deformed facial features, who should look like “alien”, but not too alien, so that the viewers can still identify with them) are all left handed. It is because the director James Cameron and the lead actress Zoë Saldaña are both left handed and they decided to make all Na’vi lefties. I must admit this not to be a mistake this time, since they really decided it to be that way, but it bothered me for the whole movie.

Mistakes:

1. The beginners bow grip mistake, holding the arrow with an index finger. It keeps there without holding if you’re calm, and this only hurts your hand, damages the fletching of the arrow and can effect the flight of the missile.


2. This string grip is reversed. The moviemakers apparently thought this would look more “alien” to us, but it looks stupid. It is impractical and unnecessarily hard form, which no bow hunting people (on which the Na’vi are based) have ever used on Earth, because it’s just not good. This hand just shouldn’t be upside down.


3. The string should go here where this circle points, close to the face of the archer. Now the bow is way overdrawn, since the string is about half a meter back from the face. This makes aiming much more difficult, since the end of the arrow is not close to the archers eyes.


4. The fletchings of arrows in this movie are made either from feathers, or from insect wings. That is not a mistake, since fletching can be made of different materials (although feathers would be best), but the number of feathers on these arrows are. Based on the screencaptures I can only see two feathers (or bug wings) in the arrows. An arrow needs three feathers in order to rotate around itself in three-dimensional space, after releasing of the missile. This rotation makes the aim more accurate, two feathers don’t do anything.


5. The distance between bows arc and string, called fistmele or brace height, should be the length of the archers fist and a protruding thumb (thumbs-up-hand). This bow is way overcurved, since the fistmele is as long as Neytiris entire forearm! That is the reason behind the mistake in point 3. I’ve drawn there a longbow with good proportions for scale.

Good:

I can’t actually think of any. Yes, these could be tried to justify since they are “aliens” from another solar system, but it doesn’t substitute the physical errors with the bow, and arrows fletching, nor the beginners grip mistakes with both hands. Surely the Na’vi, who rely on archery with their society’s food supply, would have corrected these flaws in design when they notice them. Or then they are a really stupid species which repeat their predecessors mistakes form generation to generation.


P.S.

It would’ve been nice to see what the moviemakers would’ve came up with if the Na’vi would’ve had six limbs like every other species on that moon, not just the regular two arms and two legs.


Update

Five years later I have updated this review with some corrections, read it here.