Do not lean back when shooting!

 

Many mistakes in today's drawing, which isn't a bad drawing expect the archery part in it. Which is, the main part unfortunately. 

Mistakes:

1. The bow is way too thick, this elf woman wouldn't be able to shoot with it, nor anybody else. Especially a bow this short should be much thinner, at least by half.

2. There is nothing where the bowstring would attach, it just disappears inside the ends of the bow. The bostring in reality forms loops that are put in nocks in the bow's ends.

3. The arrowtip is huge, too large for this arrow shaft. The arrow is also too short, or drawn too much back, since the arrowtip touches the bow's arc, which it shouldn't do.

4. The arrow goes on the right side of the bow, which is very unusual (I would almost say wrong, but there are a few rare medieval illustrations like this) for Mediterranean style shooting, and she should hold the arrow there with her thumb if shooting from the right side, otherwise the arrow would drop off too easily.

5. Mediterranean draw uses three fingers, she seems to use only two, which is unnecessarily harder. The bowstring doesn't seem to go behind the drawing fingers, rather through them.

6. The fletching of this arrow is pathetic, the feathers are both way too small to offer anything to the arrow (their purpose is to guide the flight of the arrow, making it more accurate), and localted way too back on the arrowshaft, so much so that they touch the drawing hand, which they shouldn't do.

7. She is not wearing a quiver nor any spare arrows anywhere. Not a very wise choice.

 

I also want to point out another thing, about her posture.

 

8. The posture is all wrong. People often draw female archers leaning backwards from their pelvis, to make them look sexier, but this is not a good posture for shooting a bow. Rather they should be leaning forwards, as was done both historically and today. This employs the big back muscles (stronger than just the arms), which gives maximum power to the shot. I have included a picture from a book "Archery Anatomy" (1995) by Ray Axford that depicts the correct posture for a modern archer that uses his back muscles more by leaning forward. I replicated the lines of his body in green, and the lines of the elf girl in red and superimposed them on top of each other so you can clearly see how much differene there is in the postures.

I have a request to draughtsmen and -women, please start to draw correct positions, and do not make your (lady) archers lean back to make them sexier, since it's just bad archery.

Sometimes you need to lean back in order to shoot very high, but this is not the case with this or any other drawing that employs this trope of backwards leaning women.

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.
 

Faceless space archer

 

Another drawing here. And another woman. This time without a top, and without a face. I guess he drew only the important parts for him. But mistakes too:

1. The bowstring goes from the wrong side of the arm. It is impossible to shoot like this! A horrible mistake, which could've been avoided with even a small amount of thinking, that hasn't been involved in the making of this drawing.

2. The infamous reverse grip. This is not a standard way of gripping the arrow. Also the string goes way too deep in the fist. This is just a mess.

3. There are a lot of things attached to the arrow shaft, making shooting it impossible, since the spikes would stick to the bow arc when released. Ludicrous!

4. The arrowtip is way too large and heavy, Even if the arrow would fly out of the bow, it would not fly more than a few meters and just drop head first to the ground.

5. The arrow is also too short. This makes its flight distance even lesser. Also the fletching sucks big time, it's another mess.

6. No spare arrows or a quiver anywhere to be seen. 

This character only has one arrow, and it's the worst I've seen. And she cannot hold the bow right. Not a very professional archer I would say. Also, where's her face?!?

You believe in horoscopes, but not in physics?

 

Hi, I'm back again, from a summer vacation. I will be on and off from this blog from time to time. I need to take breaks in order to continue mocking other people's efforts. That's hard you know! ;)

This time I will criticise this Sagittarius tattoo concept drawing. Let's get to the mistakes:

1. The most obvious one, the bow is not bending, but instead it has a rubber band string. This is so frustrating, and could be corrected by looking at a single photograph of a real person shooting a real bow. But no, many people think looking at reference is cheating and somehow not artistic. But in reality all the real artists have always used reference from real life. You should do that too if you want to become an artist someday.

2. These ugly blobs are taken from modern wooden bows, but now their shape serves no purpose, they look horrendous, and they incorporate too much space of the bow's arc compared to the limbs. Since these parts do not bend (if this bow would bend at all), they waste a lot of useful bending space of the limbs if they are too big like here.

3. This is not a proper draw. The string goes only under the ring finger. Nobody has ever done this, because it doesn't work. Reference people, reference!

4. The elbow is too bent, losing a lot of energy to try to draw the bow like this (this is supposed to be full draw).

5. The whole posture of the figure is awful, and wrong in many ways. Nobody shoots like this, arching their back like in this drawing. This is only drawn to make the female character look sexy, and it's wrong. The back should be straight, and perhaps the upper body tilting forward from the pelvis (the back still straight), to give maximum muscle power to the shot.

6. The arrow goes on the "wrong" side of the bow. This is difficult, because everything is wrong in this picture. First of all the archer is left handed. I have stopped giving this a mistake point due to several complaints by the (left handed?) readers. I know there are left handed archers, and always have been, but I don't think people drawing these images think about that, they just draw the image whichever way looks more pleasing to them. Since no care has been given to handedness, I used to mark it as a mistake. But because the very best historical archers would probably shoot both hended, I have stopped giving this a mistake point. This character is supposed to shoot with the Mediterranean draw, although it's drawn completely wrong. If we suppose it would be right, and she's a left-hander, then the arrow in most cases should go from the other side of the bow. There is a heated debate going on in the internet regarding the sidedness of arrows in historical Mediterranean style shooting. The fact is that most of the times the arrow was on the left side of the bow (with right handed Mediterranean shooters), so here is should be on the right side for a left-hander. But it's not. So it's a mistake in my books.

The only good thing about this is the hip quiver, instead of the ubiquitous fantasy back quiver.

Dryads from Witcher's world

I love the world of the Witcher. I read the first book not too long ago, and I've played through the first and second games. Unfortunately I haven't yet had time to read rest of the series as well as play the third game. But they are on my list as soon as I can manage to have some (read = a lot of) free time. I've also seen the first season of the Netflix series, but in my opinion it's not nearly as good as the books or games. It is too dull, too grey, not funny enough, and I hate the costumes, and some choices made in the casting. Geralt himself is fine, although he could do more than just grunt and be angry all the time. Hopefully the second season corrects the mistakes that are possible to correct.

I was pointed out recently that a post of mine that I thought of having been a half-orc woman, was actually a dryad from the Witcher 3's Gwent cards (a minigame inside the game). And it's true of course, how could I have missed that! Well, I haven't yet played the third game at all, and although this same dryad was in the first game, I didn't recognise her. I just didn't connect the dots in my mind. Generic female half-orcs do look similar, I will say in my defense. Anyway, my bad, now the blog post is correctly titled, and I got inspiration from that to make this post concerning the dryads in the world of Witcher.

 

This dryad is jumping while shooting. Hard, but certainly possible. The arching of the back that far is not good form though, much more power you get by leaning forwards from the pelvis with a straight back. But then again she's leaping in the air. The back arching this way is done to make her more sexy of course, since men are naturally drawn to arched backs like this, as science has shown. On to the archery mistakes:

1. If your bow has started to grow leaves, it's made of way too fresh wood! The bowstave should dry a long time before making a bow out of it, one year is not a bad time. Making bow out of fresh wood is a bad idea, since wood is a living material and the properties of the bow would change when the wood dries, ruining the bow's carefully designed performance abilities.
2. Making a bow out of a tree branch like this is also the worst idea. Real self bows are and always were made of one piece of wood, carved out of a tree trunk at least twice if not four times larger in diameter than the finished bow. So there's a lot of material to remove to make the bow in desired shape. Picking a sprout dividing into several branches is bad, as is the fact that this looks like the very tip of a tree, which would make it unsuitable for a bow. For example English longbows were made of the part of a yew tree where the heartwood and sapwood meet, to make the belly of the bow (heartwood) more resistant to pressure and the back of the bow (sapwood) more resistant to stretching.
3. The fistmele (distance between the bow handle and the bowstring) is way too big here. It should only be about hald of this distance. This bow has too short bowstring. It make the shot less powerful because of the wasted distance where the string could still pull the arrow forward.
4. Where are her arrows? There are no quiver or any spare arrows to be seen.

 

Eithné, queen of the Dryads and ruler of the Brokilon forest, as seen in the now defunct The Witcher Battle Arena illustration. The maker of this drawing has never seen human legs in his life, since the character has an entire leg growing out of her knee, the leg certainly doesn't start from the pelvis, like legs usually do. I know perpective and anatomy can be hard, but not this hard! Look at a human being, look at a photograph, look at a mirror, you have legs don't you?

Also the dryads are described as slender and small in the books, so how come this forest lady has silicone boobs?

On to the archery mistakes:

1. I searched for a moment where the bowstring actually goes. It is blurred in this image, in the ah-so-fashionable-motion-blur-effect, which they think makes drawings look like photos, but is just becoming annoying at this point since its serious overuse in concept art. It's a cheap Photoshop trick that requires no painting skills. But I was supposed to tak about archery stuff! Okay, okay, the bowstring does not touch the arrow. When the bowstring is released and is still angled like this, the arrow has not yet left the string. Only at the point when the bowstring is completely straight, thearrow leaves the string. What is drawn here cannot happen in reality.
2. This elbow is too high, and so is the shoulder of this same arm. It's bad form that does not use the back muscles correctly.
3. No spare arrows or a quiver anywhere, again. Do the dryads grow arrows out of themselves? Where do they come from?!? 
4. The bow handle is way too long. A bow is not a two handed weapon like a longsword, a space for only one hand is needed in the handle part. Too long handle takes space away from the bending arc of the bow, making it not as powerful as it could be.
   

 

 

 This picture I found from the Witcher wiki, and it was said to depict a dryad. It has grave mistakes:

1. The bowstring goes from the outside of the bow arm! This is very bad mistake, which not even a beginner would think of doing while actually holding a bow, but is alarmingly common in drawings. It happens so that the drawer first sketches the character and the bow in a certain position, and then don't realise where the bowstring should go. In some cases when the bow is canted to a ridiculous position, like completely sideways, there is no space for drawing the string under the arm, so they draw it over it thinking it must be so. It's wrong!
2. The arrow hand is upside down, grabbing the string the wrong way. We should see the palm of her hand in this picture. You might argue that maybe she's just placing the arrow there on the string like this and the changing her hand position, but I don't think the drawer has thought it that much.
3. The arrow is not nocked where it should be nocked. I drew a line to show you where the arrow should approximately be (if everything else would be correct with her bow handling, which isn't).
4. The back quiver. Not the most useful thing to have. Also making it even less useful you can put it on the wrong shoulder like this dryad has. Impossible to take the arrows from there. The length of the arm is just not long enough to draw arrows over the opposite shoulder. Also all the arrows in the quiver are broken, since they come out in a very wrong angle compared to the scabbard.

 

 

I know this is not a dryad, but a drawing of Braenn, a human woman, who was raised by the dryads. I just came by this picture, so decided to include it here because of the subject. Mistakes include:

1. Drawing the bow halfway while not shooting. One of the more common mistakes in drawings. Even a halfway draw is tiring to keep up, so no archer would ever do this. Traditional bows are not like modern compound bows where you can hold the bow for a long time while aiming. This girl is not even aiming, so what's the point of drawing the bow like this? There is none!
2. Two finger mediterranean draw, and the posture of the hand is very awkward. Three fingers would be better in this case.
3. A back quiver. Also on the wrong shoulder, so completely impossible to use.
4. The arrow is too short. The bow is half drawn, but there's not much arrow left to be drawn. It should be some twenty centimeters longer. Also the handle of the bow is unnecessarily long.

 

 

I will end this post with this lovely image of a dryad mother and her child, making arrows together. The picture is so lovely I don't want to ruin it with my red numbers, but it isn't without mistakes either:

1. The arrows are way too short. They should be almost double this length. The perspective alone cannot explain their shortness.
2. The feathers her child has gathered are lovely, but all different. You should use the feathers of the same bird (species) in an arrow, or at least very similar to each other (yes, sometimes people make the cock feather out of different species, but historically they tended to be all the same). Some species (like goose), are considered better for fletching arrows than others. You should even use the feathers from the same wing for the best results (so not mixing left and right wing feathers, since they curve in the opposite directions). Maybe the child didn't know this?
   
3. Why is she holding the thread between her teeth like that? I've fletched my own arrows with feathers and string, and I never needed to do this. I cannot understand what would be the point, since it's not even the end of the string. You can tighten it with you fingers too.

 

This is it for now, see you next time!

The new Tomb Raider cosplay

Nice Lara Croft cosplay, but the archery should use some work.

Mistakes:

1. This elbow (of her right arm) should point higher up and backwards from the arrowshaft, not to the ground like this.

2. This elbow should not be bent in like this, it will lead to the bowstring hitting the forearm. The bow arm doesn't need to be exactly straight, just a little bit bent.

3. Take the forefinger off from the top of the arrow. It will hurt in release.

4. Three fingers are enough for the Mediterranean draw, four in unnecessary and might hamper the shot.

5.This bow is crooked (the upper limb in this photo should turn right and not left), and I believe it's not a real bow, but just a cosplay prop.

Neutral:
The quiver is okay. It's ugly, but Lara is supposed to make it herself in the bushes or something. And it's more of a hip quiver than a back quiver, so that's something I like.

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.

Archery in Trine game series

Today I want to write about something which is not just a horrible picture on the Internet. Instead it's a game series I actually like a lot. Trine is a fantastic platformer video game, which is made in my own country, Finland. The game features three as-generic-as-you-can-imagine fantasy characters; a knight, a thief, and a wizard. The knight is fat and wears a shining armour, big sword and a red cape, the wizard looks like a Lego wizard (blue Gandalf) with Fu Manchu moustache and the thief is a cross of Altaïr from Assassins Creed and an oriental belly-dancer.

My favourite character of them is the thief, not because I like to watch her polygons, but because she is the most fun to play with, jumping and flying around with a grappling hook like a female Tarzan. She also has a bow to shoot enemies with. I've played the first two games of the series through, haven't yet bought the third one, and I just heard that a fourth one is also coming out, hopefully later this year.

Now I want to talk about the thief and her archery. Mainly from the concept art and cover images of the games, since arhcery is done relatively well in the games themselves, although the bow is hopelessly underpowered compared to any real life bow.

The first picture (in the top of this post) is the cover of the first Trine game (2009). The cover art is not of high quality, which is typical for Finnish games, unfortunately.

Mistakes: The bow is way too small. You could possibly make a bow this short, but it would need to be a lot thinner to be able to be bent with human arms. This is the size of an arc of a crossbow. If a bow is this short and this thick it would need some mechanism to be pulled, like a crossbow has. It is way too short to be a working bow. The bowstring loses some potential of the already very short bow by tying itself not in the ends of the arc, but several inches inward from the nocks. Looks like the maker of that bow also didn't know how the bostring should be attached so it is wrapped around the bow limbs many times, which is certainly not how it is done. One look at a decent bow woul've fixed these errors. (Also if the bow would be this short and this thick, so that it has the power similar to a crossbow, the bowstricg would need to be thrice thicker, otherwise it would just snap)

Russian version of Trine for Linux. This represents Russian game art, which is obviously of higer quality to Finnish one. They have although "localised" the characters to fit more Russian tastes. The knight being not fat anymore and infinitely more handsome than the original, and his armour being more realistic. The thief being even more sexualised than in the original, the facecover changed to a see-through cloth like oriental belly dancers have (at least in our fantasies), and her clothes decorater with Russian patterns. The wizard has been given more serious look compared to the comical character he was in the original, and he has also been dressed in a gown resempling a bit Eastern European cossack coats. All the characters' facial features look Russian to me. Interesting details all.

Good: The bow of the thief has been made more realistic, being long enough to be actually usable. The decorations are kind of elvish, from Legolas' bow from Lord of the Rings most probably. Another good thing is that she has an archers bracer only in her bow hand.

The cover of Trine 2 (2011). Mistakes:

1. The thief shoots a fire arrow (which she can in the games), even though there is no purpose. Fire arrows were never shot against people (or trolls) on purpose. They were used to light buildings on fire, and were very rarely used, and only in sieges.

2. The more problematic thing in this picture is her bow though. It does not bend. It looks like a bow looks when the string has not been pulled at all. This is a rubber band stick, not a working bow. It might shoot an arrow a few meters like a rubber band could, but it is not a weapon of any kind.

3. The thief has been given bracers to both forearms, without any reason.

The cover for Trine 3 (2015). Mistakes:

1. The bow is now bigger than before, and more recurved, which is okay, but it is too thick. It should be altogether thinner and then also thin towards to ends of the limbs. This would be very hard to pull. It also looks uneven and unfinished, as if somebody just put decorations on a random tree branch.

2. What's the purpose of those bronze elements? To my knowledge no bow ever had these kind of huge bronze elements. They would make it unnecessary heavy, especially the bronze pieces on the end of the bow limbs.

3. In this other picture the bowstring goes way too close to the handle of the bow. The distance between the bow arc and the string in the middle is called a fistmele, and in longbows it should be approximately the length of the users fist and thumb combined. In recurve boughs however the distance is even greater. This is way too small and makes the bow unnecessarily difficult to use.

4. The thief has bracers on both forearms.

Cover for Trine 4 (2019).
The writer and art director for this game are women (I actually know the writer of this game), which can be seen in the changed appear of the thief character. She is de-sexualised, cleavage is gone, and she has been given pants under her openly flowing white robe. Sadly the bow has not improved, quite the contrary.

Mistakes:

1. The bow now has a useless metallic arc "protecting" the hand holding the bow. This king of arc was never built in a real bow, because it's both useless and harmful to the performance of the bow. It can also interfere with the flight of the arrow.

2. In the cover picture the thief is shooting in Mediterranean grip with three fingers it seems, which is correct, but the arrow is on the right side of the bow, which is extremely rare, although done occasionally in Europe. But when the arrow is on the right side of the bow, it rests on the thumb of the bow hand, not on the index finger.

3. In the gameplay itself the thief shoots with a Mediterranean grip but only uses two fingers two draw. This is not good, she should use three. The arrow is also misplaced on top of all the drawing fingers, when in reality it should be between the index and middle fingers of the drawing hand. Here the arrow goes on the left side of the bow though.

4. The "bracers" in this game feature the grappling hook mechanisms she uses for climbing, but it makes a very bad bracers used for archery. The left bracer has some metal rod in the inside of the forearm, which would severely interfere with the bowstring and could even snap it in two (even that overly thick bowstring we see here). That's very bad.

Good:
The main good thing I can say about the archery in this series is that the thief uses a hip quiver, and not a back quiver, throughout all the games. This is more believable and works great!

Green arrow comes in female version too

I'm not going to complane about the bow this time, since it is a modern compound bow, and even if it looks stupid, so they do in real life, and it fits this modern archer character.
There are other mistakes though:

1. The arm and elbow point too high up, it should follow the line of the arrow.

2. This grip is wrong. It is kind of like a Mongolian thumb grip, but the thumb should be under the arrow, not on top of it. Also it seems like she is pinching the bowstring between her thumb and index finger, which is not how this grip works. Instead she should draw the string with the thumb only, and wrap the index finger around the thumb, not around the string, to keep it in place. This is a result of not properly understanding how this grip works.

3. Back quiver, as usual. The arrows seem to even be on a wrong shoulder, so almost impossible to get them from the quiver.

4. She is not looking at the right direction, there where the arrow is going. Instead she has turned her head towards the viewer of this picture. It is a standard measure of draughtsmen to intentionally or unintentionally distort the proper shooting stance in order to make the woman archer look at the viewer, or look more beautiful, or to not cover her face with the arrow hand. It's still wrong.

Why would you use a cloak for warmth, but not cover your chest with a shirt?

Mistakes:

1. This bow doesn't bend enough. From this angle it looks like it's bending, but it is the same shape which it would be when relaxed. When the string is pulled, it should of course bend.

2. The draw is not full, since there is another 20 cm of arrow shaft coming in front of the bow. This is wasted completely. One should pull the arrow as close to the arrowtip as possible to get a full powered shot.

3. She is not even looking into the direction she is supposedly aiming at. The head is not turned properly to the direction of the arrow.

4. The Mediterranean grip shouldp roperly be done with three fingers, not two like here. I'm tired of reporting the same mistakes again and again, but they never learn.

5. The arrow doesn't seem to have fletching at all. That would make its flight more unstable.

6. There is no quiver or other arrows anywhere to be seen.

Also: nobody would shoot while their falcon sits on their shoulder. The drawing hand will move significantly when shooting, and the falcon distrats the shot (and the shot distracts the falcon).

Camouelfage?

Is this elf wearing camouflage skin paint? Don't they know that the point of camouflage is to camouflage, and not just to look cool, and in order to camouflage it has to cover all the skin, not just parts of it! Or maybe it's a bizarre Michael Jacksonesque skin disease? I hope she doesn't molest any forest kids.

Mistakes:

1.The bow doesn't bend. It's always a mistake.

2. The string is not attached anywhere near the end of the bow where it should terminate.

3.The bowstring goes OVER the bow arm! This is one of the worst mistakes you can draw in an archery picture! Stop this, immediately!!!

4. The grip doesn't grip the bowstring, that's BAD!

5. The fletching of this arrow goes way too back, it shoudn't touch the string.

6. This arrow is way too thin to be used in war or hunting. Such a thin arrows are only used in competitive shooting when they have to shoot as far as possible. It lacks all the power though, and cannot easily kill anything.

7. No quiver or other arrows anywhere.

8. The bow is held sideways.

Not such a smooth criminal at all.

You should've made the Moon smaller in order to make the bow bend realistically

I absolutely hate computer graphics imagery. It's so unbearably ugly beyond any curse words!

Mistakes:

1. This bow is ridiculous. In a bad way. It doesn't bend, but the string streches. How many times I have to tell you NO, don't draw it like this ever again!!!

2. The arrow is way too long, which results in a ridiculous overdraw.

3. The fletching is awful, is too far on the back of the arrow so it touches the bowstring. Bad.

4. This arm is bent unnaturally due to the length of the arrow. The mediterranean grip is also wrongly done with only two fingers instead of three.

5. No quiver, no other arrows.

6.Left hand shooting, I assume unintentionally.

More like Duplolas with these skills

I'm getting sick of these Legolas rip-offs! Straight to the mistakes:

1. This bow is ridiculous. Looks like the reference photo the draughtswoman has copied this from ended so that the lower limb of the bow was not shown. Tince it's drawn completely wrong, it's too short, too thick and doesn't bend.

2. The string stretches here, and the bow doesn't seem to be bending nearly enough for actually being a usable weapon.

3. What is this grip? Right, it isn't a grip, because he isn't gripping anything!?! Also the arrow either doesn't have fletching or it is very fluffy.

4. Back quiver. No.

Does anorexia lead you to lumbar lordosis?

This anorexia promotion disguised as fashion photography has some major issues with archery as well. On to the mistakes:

1. The Mediterranean draw uses three fingers to draw the bowstring, not four like here. A beginners mistake.

2. The arm should point backwards from the direction of the arrow. Lifting the elbow too high wastes a lot of energy. A beginners mistake.

3. This arrow is way too long for this woman. All the arrowshaft coming in front of the bow in a full draw is wasted material. Overly long arrows were in fact used, but only in hunting, and usually fishing, by some native tribes, for example in Amazonian rainforest. Which is by the way burning at the moment. Horrible! But to this European medieval shooting style overly long arrows do not belong.

4. Arching her back like this is not a good form for archery, or anything else than looking sexy in a photograph. Archers did indeed lean forward in the middle ages, but it involves hip hinging, and the back should be straight, not arched like you had a lumbar lordosis. Even when doing archery, the back is not supposed to be arched!

5. No other arrows anywhere to be seen tells that this model has just been given a bow and one arrow and she has never held a bow in her hand before.

By the way, the faux leather can't cover the fact that this bow is entirely modern in its construction.

How can only the ponytail fly so high?

I run this blog by doing many posts at the same time. In one or two consecutive evenings I usually post ten to twenty new pictures, and put them on timing so they are automatically posted every day. Then I take a vacation from this blog for some time. I can't do this every day, and I can't stand to see these pictures too many a time.

Mistakes:

1. Sideways shooting. This time the other way around than usual. It's still stupid and pointless here.

2. Using only two fingers in a Mediterranean grip instead of three. Also seems like there wouldn't be any pulling force behind those fingers.

3. This elbow is way too high.

4. The ubiquitous back quiver as usual. It's also on the wrong shoulder.

This is the limit for now, I can't stand this anymore. It hurts my eyes too see these. Twenty is enough for now. Follow-up will be posted later. I hate this!

Avatar the last bow bender

This is actually technically pretty good digital drawing. The archery technique is all wrong though.

Mistakes:

1. This bow is some kind of sci-fi bow, but it has all kinds of unnecessary and stupid add-ons. Take them off and keep the black part and it would probably be usable.

2. This arrow tip is way too large compared to how thin the arrow shaft is. It would break off in an impact immediately.

3. Shooting sideways, or actually not yet shooting, but pulling the string to almost fully without aiming, that is quite bad loss of energy and a stupid thing to do.

4. This is not a real grip. The fingers do not grasp the string properly, and it is not possible to pull the string that way. Also the fletching of the arrow is too near the nock.

5. Back quiver. Also on the wrong shoulder making it impossible to use.

Why most archers have hoods?

The reason for using a cloak is to keep a person warm. But apparently she's not concerned of that, when she's not even wearing sleeves or pants. Anyway, archery mistakes:

1. This bow doesn't bend. For a millionth time. I do not have to say this again, but bows bend. That's how they get their power. Now it looks like it has a stretchy rubber band string.

2. Pulling the bow when not shooting or aiming. Not good, it's a power loss.

3. Completely wrong grip. I don't even know where the bowstring is supposedly going there inside the hand. The draughstman has no clue about shooting it seems.

4. Holding the index finger around the arrow. Unnecessary. This is what beginners do.

5. Back quiver. And bad fletching on arrows.

6. Left handed shooting, probably not intended. Also now the back quiver is on the wrong shoulder so the arrows are impossible to get from there.

I really repeat myself in these posts, it starts to become boring. Probably for you readers also. But what can I do, the same mistakes repeat over and over again? They never end!

They can't make Lara dirtier than this!

Two picture of the new Lara Croft, with more dirt on her body, but smaller boobs than before.
In neither of these pictures you can see the bow, which is probably the stupid bunch of rods as in the new game. Let's not talk about that now, since it doesn't show here.

In the first picture Lara is pulling the bow even though she is not aiming (=shooting) at anything. People think it looks cooler than to just have the bow in hand, so they ofter draw archers do this, and even promo pictures for movies are taken like this even though it's completely stupid and unnecessary. Pulling the bow requires quite a lot of strength, and doing it for the coolness without actually an intent to shoot is not good. It's a waste of your energy. Nobody does that in real life. Lara here is also using just two fingers for the Mediterranean grip, although she should use three. The fletching of the arrow is too small.

In the second picture Lara has a different arrow, with proper long fletching and a shaft that is as thick as a finger. That is a heavy war arrow, I don't know where she got that one. The bowstring however goes to a completely wrong directions. It could be possible if she would be using a very short recorve bow, such as what Mongolians sometimes used, but I know she's having the bunch-of-rods-bow which is the size of a longbow. Thus the string is drawn utterly wrong. I gave more realistic position for it in red.

Another Roman archer, much better this time.

Another Roman archer. This time mroe historically accurate, although the helmet has very strange decorations and the greaves should be left off. I drew in red where the bow should actually bend, I think this miniature model is made of something that is not suitable for thin details such as bows and arrows, since both of them are horribly deformed. I took the correct shape of the bow from a photograph of myself shooting with a recurve bow from last Sunday, actually in a Roman garb (but a couple centuries later than what this guy is wearing). Also looks like he's using only two fingers for the pull, when he should be using three. And a quiver is missing. Okay I though that I wouldn't have to count the mistakes, but here they are again.

1. Deformed bow and arrow.

2. Two finger grip.

3. No quiver.