Ranger on hooves

 

The man who drew this could use some reference for both horses and archers. The horses legs are just too big. Also the head is a little too wide. But anyway, this is a horse archer, not very often featured in this blog, because everybody just loves to draw female elves on trees, or ranger looking male archers crouching in shadows under their hoods.

Well, this man has a hood too, naturally. He's just a ranger on a horse. Mistakes regarding archer are:

1. Sideways shooting. Again, there is no point in this. Some people claim it is useful while hunting in thick bushes. But this character is on horseback, so what's the excuse?

2. Mediterranean draw with only two fingers instead of the usual three. The position of the hand is strange, since it is not tilted, while the bow is.

3. A huge back quiver. It is good to have a lot of arrow, but horse archers always had a hip quiver. East Asian horse archers too had a hip quiver, it was just different than in western Eurasia. They took the arrows under their armpit, not over the shoulders, like fantasy archers always do.

4. Why is he leaning so much forwards while shooting to the side? It has no purpose and doesn't make sense.

The bow, while being tiny, is not impossible. Horse bows were sometimes very small, which made them easier to operate on horseback. Small stature of the bow necessitated them being made in the recurve method, so that they were powerful enough. This bow could be more recurved, but it is passable.

There's a hood, but no robin

Another one of those mysterious hooded archer characters. These are getting pretty boring. This has some mistakes too. I didn't bother with numbers in the picture this time, but you'll get it anyway.

Mistakes:

1. Sideways shooting is always unnecessary. There is no reason why the character in the drawing should shoot like this. Hold your bow upright, or a little canted, but not sideways like this. This is obviously done to look cool, but it just looks stupid to everybody who knows even a little bit about archery.

2. The grip seems to be always hard to draw without reference. That's why people should use reference photos when drawing archery, or anything really. The right hand should grip the string but it doesn't. It seems to only be grabbing the arrow, which goes strangely through the string, or that's how it looks. This is impossible.

3. The fletching of the arrow is horrendous. This is not even an orc character, so please draw proper feathers there.

4. The man is not using his back muscles to draw the bow, which can be seen from the fact that the drawing arm's elbow is pointing too much to the side, when it should be pointing more towards the back.

5. Spare arrows or a quiver do not exist.
 

School girl Link with aviator hood

This time a 3D-rendering that looks like the Japanese game developers have tried to compose something vaguely European and Medievalish like. Those boots are just super weird, and so is the aviator hood! and the plaited skirt has much more common with modern Japanese school girl uniforms than with anything Medieval. The archery is also weird.

Mistakes:

1. The bow has these huge wooden blocks inside its arc, that will render it pretty unusable, since they would hamper the bending of the bow limbs severely.

2. There is a large bulbuous thingy in the upper nock of the bow. What's its purpose? Certainly it doesn't have one, apart from making the unusable bow even more of a nuisance.

3. The fistmele, the distance between the grip and string of the bow as indicated by the red line here is too large. In a longbow it should be approximately the height of the archer's fist with an upturned thumb.

4. The ubiquitous back quiver strikes again! It's a clear mistake in European Medieval context (and in fantasy derived from it), which this obviously tries to be.

Double-arced crossbow for no reason at all

A trading card game piece apparently. And with a crossbow, since I've started to collect crossbow pistures too. This work never ends!

But why does this crossbow has two arcs on it? It doesn't make any sense. Some modern compound crossbows (and indeed compound bows in general) have double arcs, but that is because they have the cams (working like pulleys) between the limbs of the bow. Without the cams there is no point of splitting the arc in two, it's counterintuitive and stupid. It was also never done before compound bows.

This crossbow is not a double-shooter, it has only one string, so both the arcs are attached to the same string. The string is also way too thin for a crossbow. Crossbow strings need to be thick like a bolt (a crossbow arrow).

Here are the parts of a modern compound crossbow for a reference:

That bow should've been tillered

Straight to the mistakes:

1. This bow bends asymmetrically. There are asymmetric bows in real life, like the Japanese Yumi, but this is not like those. This is just a bad bow. The upper limb bends too much compared to the lower limb. This is a problem that is eliminated in tillering, a process of making the bow limbs bend the same amount, when makign the bow. This bow is already ruined, it cannot be fixed.

2. This arrowshaft is too thin, especially when compared to the large arrowtip is has.

3. Long fletching is perfectly okay an an arrow, but these extend too far back, between the fingers of the arrow hand.

4. Two finger Mediterranean grip with the spring held only with the very tip of the fingers. The fingers should curl up some more on the string, especially if there's just two. Not in a clenched fist of course, that's not what I said.

5. Back quiver

Horror vacui

There's so much going on it's hard to see what there really is. Horror vacui much?

Mistakes:

1. Utterly ridiculous trash bow.

2. The bow doesn't bend, instead the bowstring stretches.

3. Index finger on top of arrow.

4. This grip doesn't look anywhere near convincing. It's like he's not using any strength at all, probably because the bow doesn't bend and has just a rubber band for a string.

5. No quiver, no spare arrows anywhere. Until they're inside his massive spiked collar-thingy. Who knows really.

Crossbow assassin

Let's review a crossbow for a change! Getting tired of handbows being drawn awfully, so this is gonna be a refreshing break. Mistakes:

1. This is a pistol crossbow, meaning that it's very small, easily used in one hand. These existed, but they were toys for the rich people in Early Modern period Europe. It was not an assassin's weapon by any chance.

2. The purpose of the stirrup in a normal sized crossbow is that the crossbowman puts his foot into it and that helds the crossbow in place while it is being loaded. This stirrup is too small for anyone's foot to fit in, and completely unnecessary since pistol crossbows were loaded without the stirrup.

3. The bowstring is not drawn, but there is still a bolt (crossbow arrows are called bolts) on the crossbow. This is wrong.

4. No quiver for spare arrows. Crossbow quivers were always carried on the hip by the way, surprise surprise.

What is that ring on top of his head?

I don't like this style of drawing. Too messy. But hey, that's just me!

Mistakes:

1. Bow is unbendable, too thick, and doesn't thin towards the ends at all. Complete trash.

2. The arrotip is way too large, arrowshaft too short.

3. Looks like he's nocking the arrow way too high on the bowstring.

4. No quiver, no other arrows. A pretty common mistake in drawings and photoshoots.

Elf with a WWII ammo bag on belt

An elf again, a man-elf once in a while. Still pretty boring. Left-handedness not sanctioned anymore.

Mistakes:

1. Finger over arrow.

2. Two arrows shot at once.

3. This grip is not good, it's too loose. Doesn't look like he's really drawing the bow.

4. Back quiver. Almost always a mistake in my books. Will write an article about that someday in the future. It's even on the wrong shoulder it seems.

Generic turban guy

This looks like a drawing of my friend who likes to draw clichéd black-clothed raghead characters (his wording, not mine!) that look like himself. But this is somebody elses drawing entirely. To the point: mistakes!

1. Is this arrow solid steel? That's a bad idea, an arrow has to bend around the bow arc in order to fly well.

2. This longbow doesn't seem to bend enough. Also why is a Middle-Eastern / Indian inspired archer using a Western European type longbow? Usually we always see recurve bows nowadays, because people think they look cooler, but this would be the time to use it!

3. Four finger grip, instead of three, or any other proper grip.

4. These flethings are terrible, they also cover the nock of the arrow which is really bad.

5. Back quiver, and on the wrong shoulder.

Chinese elf

This Chinese drawing has a serious mistake:

1. The bow doesn't bend. It's a common misconception in drawing, but every archer knows that bow bends, and the string doesn't stretch. I've drawn a comparison of a real bow here for you all to see how this bow should bend.

2. This bow also has blades. Unnecessary and stupid.

3. Back quiver, and even on the wrong shoulder. A mistake it is.

Vaguely Medievalish archer

This looks like a video game concept drawing for a vaguely Medieval-ish game.
Mistakes:

1. This bow is flat in the wrong dimension. Flat bows existed, and most bows were flat towards the back of the bow, not like this which is flat towards the sides. This makes bending the bow extremely hard.

2. The arrow tip is way too large.

3. Fletching is missing.

4. Reverse grip, wrong.

5. Back quiver, also wrong.

Some kind of ranger

A ranger of some sort. With a ridiculous leather patch armour à la Hollywood. Let's get to business.

Mistakes:

1. The bow seems to be constructed of different parts. This is sometimes done nowadays, but was not done historically in Europe, which' cultures this ranger is obviously based on. European bows were made of one piece of wood, or laminated with several pieces, and of different materials, like horn and sinew (in the case of recurve bows like this one here), but never like this with two wooden limbs nailed to a steel handle.

2. This arrow only has two feltchings. While there were two-fletched arrows, never in Europe, they were rare also elsewhere, and where made a bit differently.

3. Back quiver, and even on the wrong shoulder. Impossible to get the arrows from there easily.

Perfectly good hip quiver ruined with a ridiculous bow

This bow is completely ridiculous, it wouldn't work at all. It's way too thick and constructed of possibly metal. While metallic bows did indeed exist (e.g. in India, but they were always rare), they were really flat, not like this. This wouldn't bend at all and would weight dozens of kilos! There's also unnecessary spikes on the bow that are only a liability to the archer himself.

The only good thing here is the hip quiver.

Chief bull-sitter

I don't know what this is, a Native American tree person? Undead Native American tree person perhaps?

Mistakes:

1. This wouldn't work, it's not a bow, it's just a tree branch with a string. A bow has to be made of solid wood, not from a twisted branch like this. Indians were really good bow makers, so this is a shame really.

2. This arrow is laughably short, it cannot be shot from this bow at all. It also lacks fletchings.

3. There is no quiver or other arrows anywhere.

Uruk-hai archery from Lord of the Rings

A reader of mine (should I call them fans, I don't know?) asked me to make a blog post of Lurtz from the film Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Naturally I got interested, since this was one of my favourite movies when I was growing up. Can't believe it's almost been two decades from it! Lurtz is the leader of the Uruk-hai, the "super orcs" created by Saruman in Isengard. He is not in the books of Tolkien, so he's invented for the movie. In Lord of the Rings book Boromir is killed by orc archers, "pierced by many arrows".

The scene is very powerful, the last stand of Boromir against countless Uruk-hai horde. Lurtz, their leader was more fearsome than Azog from the later CGI-ruined Hobbit-trilogy for sure. I want to make several points about his archery though:

1. Reverse grip. There is very little evidence that this style was ever used historically anywhere in the World. There are no added benefits of reversing the Mediterranean grip like this.

2. The reverse grip has lead Lurtz to cant his bow, but this is in limits of reason, so it's not a mistake. What is though, is that the back of the bow has a clear edge on it. Bow backs should be (near) flat since that makes them structurally stronger. A wooden selfbow is made from a split tree trunk so that the back of the bow is made from the outer layer of wood, and belly from the inside. The bow is planed so that the back is formed of a single grain, and not sawn cross-grain, since that would make it weaker. Making a bow with a triangular shape like this would make the single grain back of the bow very thin.

 Longbow cross sections. The back of the bow (pointing outwards of the archer) is on top of these pictures. As you can see, the back is always pretty flat.

Composite recurve bows are also pretty flat on their backs since it's easier to glue flat pieces together and there would be no added benefit of this kind of edge on the bow. Some composite bows however turn towards this trriangular back shape near the end of their limbs, in the siyahs. That makes those parts less bendy, which is a desired effect there, but not in the lower limbs on the bow. Lurtz's bow is triangular everywhere on its back. I guess orcish things have to be black and edgy, like their souls (if they have those).

Cross sections of a limb of a composite recurve bow. The limb is more or less flat (to make it more bendy) until the siyah (left in the picture) which is triangular to make it bend less. It wouldn't be a really good idea to make the whole bow triangular on its back.

3. Our poor fallen hero Boromir is redeeming himself here, making the ultimate sacrifice to save the lives of the hobbits Merry and Pippin from the orcs. He continued fighting after Lurtz shot two arrows straight to his upper body. The third one dropped him to his knees. Is this believable?

The first arrow struck to the upper left pectoralis major muscle (big chest muscle), behind which at this spot is the left lung. A human will die of arrow punctured lung if not given medical treatment, but the death doesn't come immediately, it can take minutes up to half an hour maybe. The second arrow struck Boromir to his lower left abdomen, where there are intestines. Punctured guts will also lead to death without treatment, but not in an instant. Boromir continues fighting exhausted even after these two shots.

Panting breath results from the punctured lung, and he only uses the right hand for swordfighting, except for one powerful blow where he uses both hands. The first arrow to the left chest muscle have probably made moving the left arm difficult and painful. The third arrow drops Boromir on his knees again for the last time. This shot hits straight in the middle of his torso, where the stomach and liver are. This is also a deadly shot, but it will take awhile for him to die. All and all I think the death of Boromir is depicted fairly realistically, the weariness and woundings are really taking a toll on him and finally he collapses. Beautifully filmed and painfully sad at the same time.

Something I want to say about the armour though. Boromir is wearing a mail shirt (a 'chain' before a 'mail' is completely redundant) under his sleeveless leather coat and short-sleeved fabric tunic. Those garments over the top of the mail shirt are not armour, just clothes, since they wouldn't provide much protection from weapons. But the mail shirt (of which we can only see sleeves from under the tunic) is real armour, and capable of protecting its wearer from arrows pretty effectively. A widely spread misconception regarding mail is that it's good against slashing attacks, but weak against puncturing hits, such as thrusts and arrow hits. This is not entirely true. While mail protected obviously better against cutting attacks (like all armours were), an expensive good quality mail (which all historical mail was, unlike most modern mail used in reenactment) did stand a chance against arrows too. Only specifically designed "mail piercer" arrowtips of long bodkin type (needle bodkins) shot from powerful bows could penetrate it.

Arrows Lurtz are using do not seem to be (long) bodkins, as shown on the right.

Lurtz's arrowtips are not shown in focus to the camera at all, but they seem to be like "standard" arrowheads of leaf shape, generally quite small, which is good. But they do not seem to be bodkins, at least long ones. Would those penetrate mail armour? Probably not. And Lurtz's arrows struck something like halfway through Boromir, his armour and clothes and all. Lurtz is supposed to be an exceptionally strong warrior, even for an Uruk-hai, so maybe his bow is super strong?

But then again we see in close-up shots that Boromir's chest skin is showing between the lapels of his tunic, and that indicates that there is no mail underneath the torso (another possibility is that his mail shirt also has a wide neck hole). And in fact in the costume of actor Sean Bean there are only mail sleeves attached in his undertunic (done for saving production time of course).

Boromir's costume only included mail sleeves sewn onto an undershirt, instead of a full mail armour. On the right an example of European 16th century arming doublet with sewn on mail sleeves. This would have been worn under full plate armour, and the breast and backplates would have covered the parts were there are no mail in this arming doublet.

While this was done historically in the 15th century and later when plate armour was used by knights and men-at-arms, the pieces of mail that were sewn to an arming doublet were used at those points were there were no plates, such as armpits and inside of elbows. Those who didn't have plate armour, had mail shirts covering their torso and arms. Since Boromir doesn't have any plate armour with him on the travel with the Fellowship, it is reasonable to suggest that he should have an entire mail shirt under his outer garments, and not just sewn on sleeves. Since nobody would use mail (or any armour) to protect the arms before the torso.

Lurtz is shown here executing the last deadly shot, which he ultimately fails due to Aragorn's interruption. This is the first time we see his bow fully. And it is indeed an interesting piece of weaponry. The general shape of the bow is strange, like an inverted recurve bow, without the siyahs though. But this shape of bows are known from a few places and times in World history, ancient Egypt and the Near East coming to mind first. It's a perfectly functional design for a bow, yet a peculiar one. Suits the orcs well I think, since it's so different than the bows of the elves or men of Middle Earth. However, some things I consider mistakes here.

On left, a recurve bow of Turkish early modern period form, on right an angular bow of ancient Egyptian form of the Bronze Age. The orcish bow resembles a mix of these two.

4. This Uruk-hai bow has two blades attached to over and under its handle. This is stupid, since nobody would use a bow as a hitting weapon. Not even the orcs. There are some pretty stupid things said about the Uruk-hai and orcs in general in the supplementary material to the trilogy of films by Peter Jackson. I remember reading as a child from the book "Lord of the Rings: Weapons and Warfare" that the boots Uruk-hai are using were nailed to their feet! why on Middle Earth would anybody do that? It would make their walking painful, probably causing severe effects due to bleeding etc. Even though the Uruk-hai apparently don't feel pain it would still be very counterintuitive and idiotic thing to do. Why not just walk without boots then, since the purpose of boots is to protect the feet?

The same kind of thinking applies to other design about the orcs, everything have to be crudely made, look very worn out (even though it's shining new), everything is very angular and spikey, and looks painful to wear. This is true for the bow too, which have the weird angle at its back which I talked about earlier. It also has these blades that are never even used in the movie. Since they're useless. It's like a knuckle duster in a sword fight, that means an obvious loss. Lurtz picks up a sword after Aragorn falls him down since even the moviemakers realised it would look stupid if he fought with using the bladed bow as a knuckle duster, and it would be too easy for Aragorn to win against that.

5. This bow makes a very creeky sound when drawn. This would be a design mistake applied to orcish bows specifically if it wouldn't be a mistake applied to all bows in historical films! Bows do not make a creeking sound when drawn. If they do, they are probably somehow broken and in danger of snapping or splitting at some point in near future. And don't tell me this is an old bow, since it's brand new, like everything the Uruks have, as well as themselves.

What else is good about this picture is that Lurtz has a hip quiver! Not the ubiquitous back quiver that Legolas has. And everybody else in movies. But nobody in real World Middle Ages, the obvious inspiration behind Middle Earth.

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.

Archery in the new Mulan film

I just watched the trailer for Disney's live action Mulan reboot. Years ago I was forced to watch Mulan 2, which was a nightmare. Compared to that, this cannot fail, but I really hope it will be better than those other completely unnecessary live action reboots of animated Disney classics. I saw the original Disney Mulan in 1998 in the movies, and I really liked it. Shan Yu, the leader of the evil Huns was a terrifying baddie, I really feared him as a child. And the avalanche scene was awesome!

After some googling around I found out that for some reason Shan Yu is not featured in this reboot (replaced by a random witch in stupid clichéd fantasy costume). This reboot also lacks Mushu, the Cricket, and captain Li Shang (who would've made men out of you all)! Apparently (as the producer of the film stated), the moviemakers fealt that having a superior officer of Mulan felling in love with her is "inappropriate" for this age we're living. As if it would've mattered in ancient China! Seems like I don't need to go to see this movie after all. Sad.

At least the film looks cool. I really love the colours used in this movie. Why is it that ancient and medieval China get's to bee colourful (as it was) but ancient and medieval Europe doesn't (it was too)? Could we get colours back to European historical films also, please!

Costumes in this trailer looked pretty good, especially for a Disney movie! They feature actual Chinese helmet and armour designs from almost the right time period (a few hundred years too new compared to when the story of Hua Mulan was originally set, but then again it's a fantasy story not based on real characters, so it doesn't matter as much).

Archery features heavily in this trailer, and got me excited, so let's get to it!

While not delving into too much detail, let's just say these recurve bows with long siyahs (the unbending parts at the end of Asiatic composite bows) were often used in China from the Han dynasty through the Yuan dynasty (206 BCE–1368 CE).
What is also good is that the archers start their draw from a level above their heads, which is done in East Asian archery, such as Japanese kyūdō.

 Mistakes:
1. All soldiers wear leather bracers. If these are meant to be archer's bracers, then only the archers should wear them, and only in their left arm. And they should be smooth side inside the arm, not like shown here. Leather bracers were not a part of traditional Chinese armours.
2. These bows make a creeking sound when drawn. If a bow creeks, it's somehow broken. I hope not all of these bows are broken. A standard movie cliché, a mistake nonetheless.

Other good thing was that the commander shouted: "Release!" instead of "Fire!". "Fire" was never shouted before the invention and/or widespread use of firearms. Bows don't shoot fire, but arrows, so English language commands to shoot with a bow were most probably "shoot", "loose" and "release". This was really excellent to hear from this trailer.

Now I changed the language in the speech bubble to Chinese since Chinese didn't historically speak English. I don't know Chinese, so according to Cambridge Dictionary this 发射 means "release". More specifically: "Release; to fire a bomb or a missile (= flying weapon), or to allow it to fall". They have used the word "fire" there also, so I don't know if this would be correct term regarding arrows, but someone who knows Chinese can correct this.

 Mistakes:
3. Archers are shooting upwards to create a rain of arrows.

Arrow rain is often depicted in popular media, such as films, games and books, but there is insufficient historical evidence of it being done, at leat regularly. Archers did not stay stationary on battlefield and launch arrow rains after another, but instead they were an inseparable part of the armies, they moved around the battlefield, often among infantry soldiers searching for targets to shoot. The used trajectories of arrows were much flatter and the distances shot much shorter than often imagined by modern people.

4. Mulan here is shooting with a Mediterranean grip. And that is also erroneous, since she's using all four fingers, instead of the regular three. This is anyway not the style of shooting prevalent in Asia, instead she should be shooting with a Mongolian thumb grip. I hope this was just one scene, and she uses the thumb grip in the rest of the movie. Otherwise the archery coach is to blame for this.

5. We have an arrow camera stolen from TV tropes storage of clichés. But it's not a bad cliché, I like it a lot, since it's fun to look at. That's not the mistake. But the arrow flies a long distance (nothing wrong with that either) without spinning. Arrows have those fletchings at their back to give the arrow a spin in the air. This works the same way as rifling on a gun, which makes the bullet spin around it's axis. This spinning makes the projectile fly more accurately. This arrow doesn't even make half a spin during this flight. It's impossible.

Legolas did it better in the The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring. His arrow spinned somewhat, while still too little, it looked more believable than Mulan's arrow in flight.

All and all the new Mulan trailer faired exceedingly well compared to many other travesties of archery I've seen during the last few years on screen. Good job!

Compare here how this reboot fairs against it's predecessor regarding archery. I think this new one did a better job in that respect (easier to do it alive than to animate, and some of the mistakes of the animation is due to the exaggerated characteristics of cartoons, not suitable for live action, so it is understandable). It seems I gave both versions of Mulan the same amount of mistake points, but I had more good to say about archery in this live action one.

Six shooting archery in Robin Hood – Men in Tights

Since today is the leap day, and it's only in every four years (except in years that are divisible by 100, but not by 400, in Gregorian calendar that is) you get a special extra post: Cary Elwes! Of course from the hilarious comedy film Robin Hood – Men in Tights (1993). Real Robin Hood, if he would've existed (which he most probably didn't) would not have worn tights, or known about the leap day for that matter, since they used a Julian calendar at that time. All of this is irrelevant to archery though.

So this time I want to talk about how Cary Elwes, I mean Robin Hood, shoots six arrows at once. It is most probably a reference to western movies with their six-shooting revolvers. Of course you cannot do this with a bow. The second picture shows Hood placing the arrows carefully on top of each other to the bowstring. But there's nothing to keep them there, all aligned beautifully. They used some kind of movie trickery to make that happen (secret arrow holder or glue perhaps?), but in reality this would not work. If shot like this, some of the arrows would surely fly out of the bow. Possibly poorly, hindered by the collapsing arrow pile. Many arrows would just land a few meters ahead or just straight frop off the bowstring and fall to the ground immediately. It would be completely impossible to aim all these arrows.

And what would be the point of it? If an arrow can kill a man, does it need six arrows to kill him six-times more dead? This is precisely the point why the Greeks didn't employ in great numbers the repeating catapult they invented (yes catapult is an arrow thrower, and not a stone thrower, like the ballista), it was too accurate! The same happened with the invent of the modern machine guns. All the arrows and bullets flew to the same spot, which is counter-intuitive after the target is already dead. With machine guns they made the bullets sparse out in flight so they would cover a larger area. With the repeating catapult they couldn't fix that problem, so it wasn't much used in warfare. There is no point of shooting several arrows at once, since they will hit the same target, which is not needed. It is a waste of arrows. Much more useful would be to shoot the arrows one after another to different targets. Now he would have potentially killed six enemies instead of hitting one target six times.

The film is great though, you should watch it if you haven't seen it already. And watch again if you haven't seen it in recent years.

Archery in Thorgal comics

Thorgal is a fantasy comic album series by a Belgian writer Jean Van Hamme, and Polish artist Grzegorz Rosinski, one of the most famous European comic series of all time (says the backcover text). It tells the adventurous life story of orphan Conanesque (he even have long black hair) viking warrior called Thorgal, who fights tirelessly for freedom and justice, as we modern people experience and imagine those virtues, and not like ancient or medieval people. Unusual of other cliché barbarian characters Thorgal doesn't use a sword or a huge axe as his main weapon, instead he is a master of the bow. Exciting! Let's see.

I only had the third album (out of over thirty!), which I accidentally bumped into in a library of Oodi (which' opening in Helsinki last year had more people than books in it, which is very wrong for a library!). So all these pictures are from the third album (or second in English album series?) in the Thorgal series, called The Three Elders of Aran (Aranin maan kolme vanhusta in Finnish, Les Trois vieillards du pays d'Aran in original French). The texts are in Finnish.

Now to the archery mistakes:

1. This arrow taken straight out of Thorgals quiver is way too short. It's a pet peeve of artists (mine included) to draw arrows too short when they are not being shot. It is hard to understand that the length of the arrow is really significant, longer than it's shooters outstretched arm. The arrowtip is also too big.

2. Thorgal carries his bow strung and tucked around his body. This is not a good way to carry a bow. First of all it's a nuisance, a powerful warbow or hunting bow will hurt your chest if it's carried like that, since the fistmele of the bow (distance between the handle of the bow and the string) is most probably shorter than the thickness of the archers chest. Thus the bowstring presses against the chest all the time. This might not be a problem if the bow is carried like this for a short period of time, but this is how Thorgal is shown carrying his bow all the time. The other reason is that keeping the bow constantly strung (string attached to the bow arc) it slowly but gradually loses it's power when the wood curves into the shape it's being held. This again is not a problem if done occasionally for short time, but always carrying a bow like that is not good.
I have not seen any historical illustrations of archers carrying their bows like this. Usually bows are carried in bow quivers on the hip, rarely on the back, sometimes bows are shown being carried on the shoulder, but not like this around the upper body. But this is like many fantasy characters, most famously Legolas, carry their bows around.

3. Thorgal carries his arrows on a staple fantasy back quiver, which is not very useful, furthermore because the quiver opens on the left shoulder and him being right handed the arrows should be on the right shoulder.

This picture is here to show that the baddies broke Thorgals bow (and sword) in half. This bow is unrepearable now. Easier would've been just the cut the bowstring, which usually was done to render a bow incapable of shooting (although an archer might have a spare bowstring or two somewhere on him, most usually inside his hat to keep it dry, but then again Thorgal doesn't have a hat, or a bag or any other means of transporting goods on him either...). The bowstring was spared here because it's easier to depict repaired bowstave than a repaired bowstring in a comic book.

4. In the next scene Thorgal has repaired his broken bow by threading the halves together. I doubt this would work very well at all. Maybe he's able to shoot something with it, but not very far, and it might brake in two quite easily again. Furthermore this repair shortens the bow about 30-40 cm estimating from the pictures. This makes using the same bowstring impossible, because it's way too long. They thought readers wouldn't notice such a thing, even if they noticed it themselves.

Now he uses the classic fantasy rope arrow trick to hook a grappling iron over the crenellation of the keep. Maybe it could theoretically work, I don't know, but seems quite fanciful. Certainly there is no historical precedence of doing something like that. Grappling hooks were in fact shot from catapults in antiquity (to grapple other ships in naval battles), not with bows (yes I know he first shoots a string, and then uses that to pull the hook there, but it seems like this trick has too many parts that could go wrong).

This is one of Thorgals rivals in a competition over the princess (who's already his bride). The ugly ranger dressed in fantasy studded leather armour (which never existed in real life) he shoots a longbow from a horseback. Longbows were not regularly used on horseback because they're too long for effectively being shot from there. the bows lower limb will interfere with the horses body too much. That's why horse archers tended to use very short (recurve) bows, or then make their bows asymmetrical, the lower limb being shorter than the upper (like Japanese yumi).
Here the character has turned his bow in a 45 degree angle in order to be able to shoot without having the horses neck interfering with the bow, which is exactly the thing you would do if you would have to shoot too long a bow on horseback. No mistake here. He also has his arrows on a hip quiver, like one should do.

5. What is this? This is completely ridiculous! That ranger character holds the bow with one hand (being the other hand he shot with the last time), and holds the arrow only between his bowhand fingers! This would not work with a real powerful bow. Nobody is strong enough to hold the bow strung like that with only one hand. The bow should be a children's toy in order for that to happen. Also the aim is ruined, it's just not possible to shoot with one hand only. It's quite a stupid trick, doesn't even look cool. I have never seen this mistake before, so I don't even have a name for it, and I doubt (and really hope) I don't ever see it again, so there's no point of creating a category for it.