There's something odd about the new Hunger Games poster

This ad catched my 26-year old (young?) eyes in a newspaper recently, and I just had to make a post about it.

What is so irritating about it?
Is it the fact that this mediocre youngsters book series is turned into a hugely popular money-making movie machine?
Is it that they just had to turn a trilogy into a tetralogy (more correct term than quadrilogy, based on Greek rather than Latin in this case), that the last book just had to be made into two separate movies, like they did with other (much better, in my opinion) youngsters book series turned into a film series (including wizards if you didn't guess already)?
Is it the amount of liquify they used to make Jennifer Lawrences waist a tiny bit thinner and her legs more than a tiny bit longer?
Is it the cheapest of cheap looking graphical device of flames surrounding everything?
Is it the very much overused font choice of Bank Gothic, the "standard movie font when you have no imagination at all"?

It isn't even all those things together. But it's the archery, or the lack of it for that matter. Let me delve with you deeper into the more or less mystical aspects of bowmanship (or bowwomanship?), with my usual list of...

Mistakes:

1. The biggest mistake here is that there wasn't actually a bow present in the shooting of this photograph! From the very first look at this poster the whole thing seemed more than a bit off. It was unnerving to me and when I looked closer I realised that the odd feeling came from the fact that the bow in this photo is computer generated. How do I know this? From several reasons: the arms of Ms. Lawrence look very relaxed, the muscles are not stretched and the fingers don't seem to hold anything with a firm grasp. She might have had something in her left hand though, but nothing in her right, it seems. Why would they do that? Because they are idiots who think that nothing is perfect enough if it's not made with computer (ahem... late career Peter Jackson complex). But it's just horrible, and doesn't look real at all.
2. The second mistake is also the mistake of the guy who generated the computer bow for this. When we draw a rectangle around the bow (any type of bow) the ears of the bent bow should reach the middle point of the rectangle. One half for bow, the other half for string. Then the bow is properly made (or drawn, with a pen that is, or computer). This bow has too short string, or then it bends too much. In either case the bow ears bend over the middle of the box I've drawn around it. The little white arrows show the places where the bows each end should reach while it is fully drawn.
3. Another mistake by the CGI guy, who apparently didn't look very closely to a real bow while attempting to create one. The bowstring is not attached to the nocks of the bow! This looks ridiculous and is bad since you wouldn't be able to shoot with it, and even if you would, it would make the shot less powerful, since now not all the power of the bow is harnessed by the string. The little green arrow shows the point of the nock on the bow, where the string should be attached.
4. Beginners mistake (still Jennifer, still this one after several archery movies you've been in?) of keeping forefinger above the arrow. It should hold there with gravity and your fist below it. If not, something else is wrong with the position of your hand, but putting a finger around it won't help that, it just makes it painful to shoot since the fletching of the arrow will hit your fingers. It can also affect the flight of the missile, and damage the fletching.
5. She has three fingered archery gloves designed for Mediterranean grip, which is the standard in Europe (and western world) anyway, but she is only using two fingers to draw the bowstring. Why is that? Just another CGI mistake perhaps?
6. The hand (and string and arrow) is not quite high enough, it should be closer to her mouth. But the photography director has obviously commanded her to keep it lower in order for all the people to see her lips. Womans luscious red lips have to be seen always, that's the Rule I-don't-know-which-number in the books of movie makers.
7. Where are her arrows? Of course she didn't have a quiver, if she didn't even have bow the day they photoshooted, but should the CGI-guy have put it on her later? Can't shoot much without arrows you know.
8. This stance. It's not a stance. It's a jump. You can't shoot properly while jumping if you're not Lars-Andersen-level-archer. Which Katniss is not. Aim would be terrible.

Good:
Her arms form a nice parallel line with the arrow, which is always good. But that should also always be expected of every archer on the planet.

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

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

So this picture looked good at first, but I just looked it a little longer and noticed a lot of odd things, which can also be called mistakes:

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

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

Terrible Hobbit dwarf cosplayers

Two more Kili's this time!
Both are cosplayers who try to be the archer dwarf from The Hobbit movie trilogy, both are obviously girls, and neither of them can shoot with a bow and arrow.

First I'd like to address something relating to cosplay. Why is it so that all the Kili cosplayers I've seen on the Internet have been female, trying to be the male dwarf, glueing or painting some stubble on their chins? That does not look remotely real or believable. Everyone notices right away that they are not men. Male and female physique is quite different and the smaller jaw usually exposes the female gender easily, if nothing else (like the obviously female haircut in the B picture, or the makeup). And if the human inside the character speaks, the play is over.

Cosplay is one of my hobbies too, as well as costume and prop making. I just can't understand why it's premarily a female hobby, at least in Finland where I live. Most of the people in conventions who have dressed in costumes are women. Men tend to be more interested in gaming (traditional and video). Another question is, even though there wouldn't be enough men willing to cosplay some male characters, do women really have to cosplay them? There are plenty of female characters out there to cosplay, even if we rule out all the sexist and stupid 80 percent of them!
And then there's genderbending, even though I'm not the greatest fan of it, but if you really must play as a character of the opposite gender, can't you adjust the costume to your own? Just with a little bit of imagination you can make the role yours. Women can make female versions of male characters, be just as happy cosplaying them (if not happier, since it requires less tied breasts and glued stubble on face), and look cool and inspiring instead of obviously fake and ridiculous.


But now to the mistakes in these girls' archery, if it could even be called that.

A

1. Sideways shooting. One of the worst mistakes you can make. Enough said of it already in the previous posts.
2. What is this bow supposed to be made of? Looks like plastic and cardboard to me, but it might imitate wood and bronze. Anyway, if it would be bronze, it would be too heavy, cumbersome and unbendable to actualy work well.
3. The arrow is on the wrong side of the bow. This is the most common mistake seen in this blog's examples of crap archery. How she think the arrow keeps there? She has to literally hold it between her fingers, unless it would drop to the ground! Did the thought not cross her mind to maybe put the arrow on the other side of the bow? No? Okay, terrible. You just failed your basic archery course.
4. Four finger grip around the string. Not necessary and quite amateurish.
5. These little arrows and the dashed line show the two points where the bowstring bends. Because she's shooting stupidly sideways, the position of the drawing hand is unnatural and results in the bending of the string. It is true that you can bend the string sideways like this to give the arrow and extra spin in direction or another, but that is super high skill level precision archery stuff, not for the novices in these pictures.
6. The larger opaque white arrows show the direction of her arms. And they are not anywhere near where they should be. The biggest problem is again the sideways shooting, which results in a very poor shooting form, and the arms are just all around the place.
7. This arrowhead is not sharp. What are you trying to do, knock someone out? Or hunt squirrels without damaging their fur? I doubt that. It's also too big and heavy for this arrow (if the tip would be made of metal. I bet this foam tipped "arrow" flies as good as a foam tipped "arrow" can, which is probably below ten meters).
8. This mock of an arrow doesn't have proper fletching, what a surprise! Two feathers in terrible condition instead of three good ones. Nice job there.

B

1.  I just ended up lining this whole figure, since everything about this form and holding of the bow tells me that this person has never hold a proper bow in her life, let alone shoot with it. It's like she's holding a delicate crystal goblet full of red wine, in a pure white silk dress, walking on killer high heels on a slippery wet marble floor. That's not the way to hold a bow and arrow. That should be like a lumberjack and his trustworthy double-bitted felling axe, not just with brute force, but with firm hand and expert's preciseness, every hit of the axe splitting a log in two perfectly balanced halves, never hitting a rock or his own leg.
2. Maybe she wasn't holding the bow properly because it's not a proper bow! Or then not. Anyway, the bow is a toy. With a bow this thin you can create enough energy to maybe get an arrow stuck in a dartboard, if the arrow is sharp enough. With a real war bow you (well, not you, but a professional ancient or medieval archer) would hit right through the wall behind the dartboard and nail a guy hiding behind it.
3. Arrow. On. The. Wrong. Side. Of. The. Bow. Again, she has to use her thumb to keep it there.
4. These transparent big white arrows show the position of her arms. They are again a mess (and covered in obvious plastic foam!), and even though she hasn't made the full draw yet, I bet my head that her arms aren't aligned when she does that. A novice just don't get it right without proper instructor.
5. The cock feather (red one in here) should point towards the face of the archer, not outwards. That's because the two other fletches (which are opposite to each other) then pass the arc of the bow without touching it and thus damaging the fletches.

That's for today. I have nothing good to say about these "archery" pictures.

Kili the Dwarf from The Hobbit

A dwarf archer for the first time in this blog. They are quite a rarity. J.R.R. Tolkien, who is siglehandedly responsible for creating the modern concept of fantasy dwarves, elves, orcs etc. also wrote about dwarves using bows in his book The Hobbit. Peter Jackson's film adaptations have quite a many archer characters; Legolas and Tauriel, who were not in the book, Bard the Bowman of course, and also the dwarves Kili and Thorin. Although Thorin's archery stuff was cut out of the theatrical release. Maybe it's in the extended edition (of the already extended-to-three-movies adaptation of one book merely 300 pages long), we'll see...

Someone in internet confessed that he/she (probably earlier) hated that the dwarves used bows, and the bows should belong to elves, and elves only. Well, this is both stupid and ridiculous. And also moronic, did I forgot to mention. Why couldn't the dwarves use the bow? They use bows in the Hobbit book for Iluvatar's sake!!! Professor Tolkien invented modern concept of dwarves and he made them use bows in the first book they appear in! Yes, elves use also heavily bows, but also many other kinds of weapons, such as swords, knives and spears.

It is a ridiculously stupid and clichéd view that dwarves should only use axes or giant warhammers as their weapons (as in the eponymous tabletob miniature wargame), not swords, spears and especially bows. Many games have give them gunpowder instead! Dwarves are based on Viking mythology, where they first appear and where Tolkien omitted them, so they "should" only use Viking weaponry. That includes swords, spears, axes and bows for example. Especially not firearms!

Elves are also based on Nordic legends, so their weaponry "should" be the same as the dwarves'. But it is fantasy and they can use more diverse weponry if an author wants. As long as it's believable. I think gunpowder weapons are more than a bit off the Viking style of dwarves, but hey, that's just me!

Also the elves shouldn't only use bows, since that's stupid. No army ever used only bows. In every land and time period throughout history all armies had a large footman force in their core, using spears and/or swords. Bowmen were often important, but without anything else, they wouldn't win anything.


But about the dwarf Kili, and his archery. First mistakes:

1. Two finger grip. He only has two fingers covered in leather glove, archers glove, so it's natural that the actor doesn't want to use the third finger to draw the string, since it can hurt. they should've given him a third leather finger in his glove at the costume department.
2. Keeping bow and arrows in a same (separate) quiver is nothing unusual, for example ancient Persians, Scythians and other eastern/steppe people's did that. But their bow quivers were always at waist level, fastened to a belt. Not in the back, which is not the place for arrows either. They are harder to get there, and why you would make things harder, when you can make them easier? Especially if it may mean if you live or die!
3. These flat headed arrow tips are not unknown either, they were used occasionally, but they are kind of speciality arrows. These would probably be used in hunting small animals, such as squirrels, or some other rare purpose, but not against armored opponents for example. These are not good for war. And the arrow tip is also too large, it would be too heavy for that arrow. I get it that they tried to make the arrow look bulky (and succeeded) so it would seem more "dwarven", but why the dwarves have to make everything so impractically thick, heavy, angular and bulky? It's not very useful you know.

Then the good parts, and there are surprisingly many:

1. I didn't expect to see good archery in The Hobbit films at all, but Aidan Turner (Kili's actor) has really listened their archery instructor. Better than anyone else on the set. His archery form is nearly perfect. In this second picture his grip is more of a three finger Mediterranean one, and the bowstring is really drawn near his mouth, where it should be. This give much better aim.
2. The lines from the arrow and both arms are parallel, which is great. This is how it's done.
3. The arrow goes on the left side of the bow, which is right. Too many beginners put it on the right side and then drop the arrow wondering why it happened. He also doesn't seem to shoot sideways, like all other archer characters in The Hobbit have done. Shame on them, good for Kili. Although Kili's bow is so short than it wouldn't lose much power when drawn sideways. Although aim would be poor of course.

Strange:
I already talked about the arrow tip, but I need to say something about the bow too. It cannot be clearly seen in these photos and screencaptures, but Kili's bow is a very short composite recurve bow. It's length is about the same as his arm from shoulder to fingertips. This short composite recurve bows were in fact used in history, by the Huns for example, but they were always used on horseback. That's why they were so short, so they didn't interfere with the horse. Or the other way around. Anyway, the dwarves are all foot soldiers, so why not a longer bow? Are longbows too elven or something? Although Tauriel was given a recurve bow too, since it seems to be in fashion now. It has become hard to even find longbow using characters these days.

All about Amazons!

The day before yesterday I played a game called Smallworld with my girlfriend and a good friend of mine who brought the game. It was a great experience, Games Magazine 2010 game of the year winner. The version we played was on Ipad (I don't like Apple's products), and my friend said it was even better in board game version, which it originally was designed to be.

Anyway, the game has several different "races" (more like species, like they should always be called in fantasy and science fiction settings, since the "races" are so different they cannot be of the same species), and one of them is Amazons.

This (A) is the Amazon picture from the game. B is a figure made of the character, which can be purchased on the game's official website.

I don't have much good to say about this character. And not even talking about archery yet! The baby-faced sex-Amazon has the kind of Poison Ivy-esque "clothing" that only holds on her body with the Holy Spirit, which may explain the visual connection with Eve of Paradise. No, boots and one bracer are not clothes. And neither are some strategically placed tree leaves. She has some kind of "tribal" tattoos or warpaint on her body, but also heavy mascara, pink eyeshadow and red lipstick. Of course Amazons didn't really exist outside ancient mythology, but this is not the style any woman has ever dressed herself. Especially for battle!

How far have we come from the original source of Amazons from Greek mythology?
This is a real image of an Amazon (as "real" as it can be of a mythical character):

Herakles (Hercules in Latin) here is fighting with an Amazon queen Adromakhe (NOT the wife of Hektor of Ilion (Troy)). The Amazon is clad in elaborately embroidered khiton (a Greek tunic), bears a helmet, greaves (shin armour), shield, spear and sword. Most of the pictures of Amazons show them fully dressed in robes, tunics and trousers. In fact after this early period of vase painting which this image represents, Greeks tended to portray Amazons in Persian garb. That's because Persia was their mortal enemy, and represents barbarism in Greek minds (which it really was not, but that's propaganda). Amazons also represents barbarism and the whole idea of women fighting against men was a blasphemy to the Greeks, a nation of great inventors and military geniuses, but also of probably the biggest gynophobia (fear of women, chauvinism) of any advanced civilization. Thus, Amazons were dressed in Persian style headdresses, long sleeved tunics and even trousers, such barbarian clothes Greeks would have never used. And trousers were seen as feminine! How have times changed.

A few millenniae later some sweaty nerd boys in their basements read about Amazons as well as other mythological stuff, and incorporate them in their role-playing games. They probably didn't have pictures of Greek vase paintings, since internet was not in use yet, and with their longing of women, they created the modern charcter of Amazons, exotic ultra-sexual nation of fighting females. They were not man-haters and hated by men anymore, now they become just targets of lust. How many times have male game designers / moviemakers / comic draughtsmen justified their Amazons (used here as a synonym for all female fighters) as being strong and dangerous opponents to any man, while at the same time their costume choices tell a wholly different approach of just trying to please teenage male audience.

The introduction text for the Amazon figure in the Smallworld game official webstore tells a lot:

“Strong and fearless... beautiful and exotic... the Amazon is deadly accurate with her favorite weapon, the bow and arrow. Definitely not a foe to encounter in the dark! Winner of the 2009 popularity context as the most beloved Small World character, this Amazon will be a natural fit at the top of your game shelf!
The Amazon figure is 21 cm tall.
Note that the Amazon figure is mildly NSFW. If you, or your family, are offended by partial nudity, you should not view or purchase the Amazon.”

And why is that every Amazon/female warrior uses bows nowadays? Archery is not easier than sword fighting for instance. It does require a great amount of strength and skills. Not to say that women couldn't be strong and skilled warriors, just trying to defend archery, since it seems to be so misunderstood these days.

And now we finally get to the archery mistakes:

A. Game picture:

1. This bow doesn't get thinner at all towards the ends of it. How is it supposed to bend? Completely ridiculous bow which doesn't work. Great.
2. This is like reverse sideways shooting. Maybe the maker of this picture had a hard time (pun intended) fitting the bow into the small square tile which shows in the game. Anyway, the bow is way too tilted. The fistmele is also too big.
3. What is this position of arrow?!? It's not even on the bow grabbing fist! It looks nothing else than dropping. It should be on the other side of the bow, so this wouldn't happen.
4. Maybe the arrow is dropping because it has a way too large arrowtip. That wouldn't fly very far. Stop drawing spear heads on arrows, please. An arrowtip should not be much bigger than the last bone of your thumb.
5. The arrow doesn't have fletching at all. At least none can be seen here. If there is something, it's too small and too close to the nock of the arrow.
6. Another mistake inside the same circle, what is this style of drawing the string with two fingers, and even keeping the pinky straight? We're not in Versailles you know? Grab it with three fingers in Mediterranean style. That grip is more powerful, and power you will need to bend that inlexible bow.
7. The arrow should be drawn about here. It's not anywhere near the correct place in this picture. The makers of these kinds of pictures always want to show the face of the woman so badly taht they just can't draw the arrow near the mouth of the archer where it should be. This Amazon has a very very poor aim.
8. Where are all the other arrows? Don't tell me she only has one.

B. Figure:

1.  The figure is somewhat better in the manner of archery form than the original drawing, but this has got a series of new mistakes. The arrow is again on the wrong side of the bow.
2. The arrowtip is still too large and heavy.
3. No quiver to be found here either.
4. This white arrow shows the correct nocking point for the arrow on the bowstring. Now it's nocked too high. At the last picture is was nocked too low.
5. The last picture shows quite clearly how the bowstring touches the forehead and left breast of the Amazon, and bends. It's not good. The original myth of Amazons is that they supposedly burnt the mammary glands of the left breast of their prepubescent daughters before their breast started to grow, so that the left breast wouldn't infere with a bowstring. They even got their national name from this, "a" = without, "mazon" = breast (in Greek). This is of course not true. Not only because Amazons as a nation didn't exist (there were some women warriors in ancient times, mainly in steppe peoples, like Scythians), but because no women archer would have to do that. The breasts have to be exceptionally large in order to disturb archery, and for them to be that large a woman has to be very fat, which women were not back at the ancient times. This Amazon figure although draws too much, which results in the bowstring to touch her forehead and breast. They have enlargened her bust from the original picture though.
6. She doesn't even hold the bowstring! The bowstring is not even at the nock of the arrow! This is impossible. The string is only back of the fletching, which is made of feathers, which would of course not hold the string back there.
7. Again the two finger grip, but what is she even gripping, since the string isn't in her hand?
8. The fletching is big enough, but it's too far back and has only two plumes instead of three. An arrow will fly even without fletching at all, but the purpose of those feathers is to give the arrow a spin (life rifling gives to a bullet) so that the arrow will fly more accurately. Three feathers are needed for that.
9. What is this bulge in the arrow? They may have thought to give the arrow some more charcter, but this ball really just hinder the arrows flight by hitting the bow's arc while it flies besides it.

Good:
Hmm... nothing except at the figure, the position of arms and bow is correct, and she has got a bracer in left arm only.
The game Smallworld is great though, buy it, play it, enjoy it! I command you.

Turok, worst of archers

Turok, son of stone is a native American comic/animation/videogame character who uses his bow to battle dinosaurs. Sounds awesome right? This panel from a comic (or a frame from animation?) tells another story. Turok must be both mentally and physically handicapped, since he cannot even hold a bow right. Everything is so wrong in this picture I don't know where to start!

But let's begin, with the mistakes:

1. He's depicted left handed here, when he's really not. A common mistake.
2. The lines from both hands and from the arrow should be parallel. Now they are not anywhere near where they should be. This form wastes the drawing energy of the arm and makes the shot less powerful. It's also more tiring for the archer.
3. The bowstring should, shall and will never ever go OVER the bow arm!!! How is this so hard to get right?!? Stop drawing it like this, it's completely impossible to shoot like that! And don't you see how ridiculously stupid it looks.
4. The former mistake would not happen ever if people would also stop drawing people shooting sideways. It's not cool! It's stupid, it makes the shot less powerful since the archer cannot draw the bow with full force, because the bowstring contacts with the archers body. Nobody shot like that ever.
5. The arrow should be placed as near the middle of the bowstring as possible. It's not anywhere near the middle in this picture. The white arrow shows the correct place.
6. How much this arrow head would weight? It would not fly anywhere with that stone on it's head. Better use that as a mace or something. Arrowheads were small, like the size of the tip of your finger, not your whole fist.
7. That bow does not bend! Bows do bend! They are made of wood! Even when they are made of metal (very very rarely) they bend. If they don't bend and only the bowstring stretches, that's not a bow, it's a slingshot. And not nearly as powerful than a bow. For Manitou's sake, how is this so hard to understand?!?
8. This hand is not holding the arrow or the bowstring. Given the line of the string, the hand is in completely wrong position. It just wouldn't work.
9. The arrow should be positioned near the hand holding the bow, not far away. That makes aiming more difficult in this picture.
10. Arrows weren't held in a back quiver since they are hard and slow to get from there. Quivers were worn hanging from a waist belt.
11. Turok here not only has a back quiver, but it's on the wrong shoulder if he's shooting left handed, which he is now. How he's supposed to get the arrows from behind his head?

Good? Hahahahaha, not!
If the word "comic" is meant to mean laughably bad, then the maker of this picture has succeeded, otherwise he should change his career. I heard that the streets could use some more people to wipe them clean.

Swaggety swag peasant bowman

A male archer for a while. Looking quite swaggish, even though I hate the word swag. Can't believe I'm even using it! Anyway, to the mistakes:

1. This is the most imbalanced bow i've ever seen! It is true that in kyudo, Japanese archery, people use asymmetrical bows, which' upper limb is longer than the lower limb, but they are not nearly this asymmetrical. This is really too much. The lower part of this longbow sized recurve is so small compared to the upper part that it makes shooting with this device a completely impractical job.
2. The bow is also very unusual in shape. And when I say unusual, I really mean bad design. It is a recurve bow, but it curves here and there, has a weird angle just above the handgrip, and that angle goes in wrong direction. It's also pretty ugly altogether.
3. Fistmele, the distance between the bows arc and string is a bit too big.
4. Where is the quiver for arrows? No arrows at all, what's he going to shoot then?
5. Now, these asymmetrical bows were only used by samurais, and samurais were mainly horse archers (yes, sword was only a secondary weapon to them). They used asymmetrical bows (hankyu and daikyu) because they could then more easily aim at low targets and the bows lower limb wouldn't contact with the horse, but the bow was at the same time powerful enough since it was longer at the upper limb. The main problem here is that this man is wearing those oh-so-fabulous baggy pants which girls nowadays seem to love on men. And it is impossible to ride with that kind of impractical lower body garment. So this archer is using a cavalry bow, but cannot ride.

Wannabe Pocahontas

Native American women are all very beautiful. They are always fit, long legged, long haired, athletic, thin and big busted at the same time. They look like European fashion models with black hair and reddish tan. At least after Disney's Pocahontas they looked like this. All of them. They may have war paint, feathers and/or beige clothing. Always tight, like we know women have been wearing in every culture in every time. Just for the eye pleasure of the opposite sex. This is borderline racist, exotisism at best, but I wasn't supposed to talk about that.

No, I was supposed to talk about crap archery, since that's why you are here, aren't you.

At first glance this picture doesn't look very bad, despite green eyed "Pocahontas" with the suede shirt glued on her silicone breasts and an odd "standing" position. But the number of mistakes surprised me this time:

1. Left handedness. Not intended of course, just not thought all the way through.
2. What is this bow really? Indians used simple self bows, looking like European longbows. But what is this? It looks like a recurve bow used backwards! Strange angles on it's arc. Also why there's a supposedly metal (iron/steel) tube on the grip? Is the bow constructed of two pieces joined at the middle. This is not an unheard construction of a bow, but I haven't ever heard of indian bows made with this method. And what's the bandage rolled around the bow for? Is it broken, that would explain the odd angles on the arc? But then it would be useless.
3. There are no nocks to hold the bowstring in place. The maker of this picture haven't drawn the string to the end, it just stops at the bow.
4. The arrow goes on the wrong side of the bow. This is probably the most common archery mistake of all time. It can clearly be seen that nothing is holding the arrow in place here, and it would just fall of in reality.
5. Beginner's mistake, holding the forefinger of the bow gripping hand forwards. Completely unnecessary and possibly dangerous to the finger. The arrowtip in this same circle is a bit too heavy looking. And made of iron/steel, a material not known to Indians before Europeans introduced it to the New World. But this picture can take place after that, so I didn't count it as a new mistake, and this list is already long enough.
6. No bracer. Now, using a bracer is not necessary, at least in native archery, but this woman is having a bracer/glove in her string arm. And this is wrong. Why would she have a bracer in the wrong arm?
7. Of course the drawer wanted to show the face of his archress, but she really should draw the arrow near her mouth, otherwise the aim is pretty poor.
8. The fletching of the arrow is way too back, another very common drawing mistake. It should not touch the drawing fingers. Also the fletching looks like it's made of tree leaves? What is this madness, it should be feathers. Feathers can also be dyed, but not in this bright green colour without chemical colouring, which wasn't possible in pre-industrialized society.
9. She is drawing the bowstring with only two fingers, while she should be using three. Anyone who's tried drawing a bow with two and three fingers will use three, since it's stronger.
10. Where are her other arrows? No quiver, pretty bad solution for war or hunt.
11. Not only does this picture look like she's soon falling down, it also looks like it will be her very last fall. The hostile looking environment would require a much steadier archery stance, otherwise she's losing both her target and her life. But of course this is a female drawn by a male, so she just has to be in a crooked position which will show off her boobs and butt in an unrealistic, but jerkable way.

Good:
Well, this had more mistakes than I would have expected, but at least the bow does bend rather realistically, and the drawing arm is parallel to the bow arm, so the arrow has the possibility to fly somewhere. Certainly not in the worst category of drawings.

Anorectic arthritis elf

This generic fantasy elf female, who has a body of a standardized anorectic mannequin, eyes as blank and face as emotionless as her plastic equivalent, is also shooting wrong. The maker of this picture is to blame of course, since he hasn't used any reference at all.


Mistakes:

1. Left handedness. As told many times before, not a mistakes if intended, but here, certainly not.
2. Sideways shooting. The string touches the flank of the archer thus making inefficient shot.
3. Ridiculous bow. Not as ridiculous as some else, but still a stupid design. What are those glowing green things? And what for as these spikes? Did the maker of this picture intend that this bow could be used as a melee weapon too? Well, that's a bad idea, which can break the bow.
4. Back quiver. Enough said of this already.
5. In the same circle, another mistake, not room on the shaft of the arrows for fingers to grasp behind the fletching. Also fletching could be longer.
6. Very bad posture and stance. Does she have an arthritis on her knees or what? Is this supposed to be a sexy pose? Of course it is, but it fails to be anything else than ridiculous. What's with the length of the legs too? One could argue that this is an elf, but these same boys draw those giraffe legs on human women also. Anyway, a good shot would require much steadier stance.

Red manga archer woman

This science-fiction-ish, more fiction, not science at all, manga archer woman has a very stupid bow.


Mistakes:

1. What are these things growing out of her bow? They are completely ridiculous and ugly, and seriously decrease the capability of the bow. The maker of this picture thought that they would look cool, but they don't. Very stupid indeed.
2. These two spikes protruding horribly out of the bow interfere with the line of the bowstring. The string will damage every time it hits these spikes while released. That is, every time. Until it breaks. Very very stupid design.
3. The string goes over the arm. Now the woman is not shooting in this picture, but why the string would still go there. Does this imply that she would also shoot the string on the wrong side of her bow arm? I hope not, since then this drawing sucks in a whole new lower level.
4. She's holding three arrows at once. Not impossible at all, many speed shooters have done that. Are she going to shoot more than one arrow at once? I hope not! But the arrows lack their fletching completely. Not good for accuracy.
5. And she doesn't have a quiver at all. Is that why she's holding the three arrows in her hand? Probably so. Not a wise idea to go to battle or hunting without a quiver, only carrying arrows in your hand. Thus you can only bring a handful, which is not enough.

Roman archer (illustration by David Kennett)

Today, for a change, a piece of illustration. Other drawings found from DeviantArt and around the Internet I just call pictures or drawings, since they are not art nor illustrations. Art would have to have some artisticality in it, and those picture lack it completely, showing only a collection of overused clichés, plain sexism and downright poor drawing skills. This is labeled as illustration, thus not high art, but some kind of an art form itself. It's made by David Kennett, who owns himself to honor to be nominated here, unlike countless others triers and failers.


Mistakes:

1. There are really only two mistakes here. Kennett has clearly done research about the Romans, this piece is called "Roman archer" (he has illustrated books about Romans and other Ancient peoples). I am also an expert of the Romans, so I can tell that the work is done properly here and the armament is in good order. But he should've looked photographs of archers using a recurve bow, because the bow doesn't bend properly here. It's almost in it's undrawn form. Not good. I've drawn for comparison the real curvature a Roman recurve bow should have.
2. The other mistake is smaller one. The quiver is not behind the shoulder, which is great, and it is on the waist level, although it's too tilted. It's almost completely sideways, a way many Asian peoples use it, but their quivers are of different construction that Ancient ones. If the quiver is in this position, the arrows tend to fall off too easily while moving. It should be vertical, like I've drawn on the right. I get that it makes a nice diagonal in the picture, but still, it's an error.

Good:

Everything else is really good in this picture! The form of the archer is perfect, the arrows and bow look decent, and even the outer-archerely things haven't got mistakes. And the drawing has a great mood in it, and I quite like Kennetts style (which is a lot to say from me).

Green elf archer woman almost falling down

What's wrong with this elf woman archer? Other than she's very clichéd fantasy figure, has a dislocated hip and is soon going to fall from a tree without proper footing. At first glance it might seem okay, but even a few seconds more looking at it exposes it's flaws.


Mistakes:

1. The bow does not quite bend enough. I have invented a good rule of thumb for that: either sketch or then just imagine a rectangle around the bow, the bows ends should bend to the middle of the upper and lower frames of the rectangle. It's as easy as that, doesn't matter which shape the bow is.
2. The archer here is using only two fingers for a Mediterranean grip. Proper grip utilises three fingers.
3. The arrow she's shooting doesn't have fletching at all. Maybe the maker of this picture didn't want them to ruin the sight of her lips. But in reality, it would. Just draw them. Lips don't show.
4. The arrows which are on her back do have fletching. But the fletching looks terrible, they're apparently made of grass, or then the feathers are dyed green and damaged very much. They're also too back on the arrow shaft, no room for fingers to grasp the arrow.
5. The arrows are on her back and not in a hip quiver.
6. The arrow goes from the wrong side of the bow. It should be on the left.
7. Keeping the index finger straight is a beginners mistake. Completely unnecessary.

Tortured female anorectic leftie redhead Jew archer

Now back to the horrible stuff! Can't be without awfulness for a very long time, can't you?
This is a perfect example of all kinds of clichés and mistakes put into one picture. The boy who has drawn this, has had no reference of bows, arrows, archers or women at hand, only a Wacom pen in his right hand and his little willie in left. That is why the result is what it is. Can't you people just stop this nonsense and start to use real reference? I'm begging you! No I'm not, I'm just mocking you, since you deserve it!


Mistakes (amount of them must be a record thus far!):

1. The archer woman shoots left handed. In a picture with this much mistakes it's unintentional. So it's a mistake.
2. The bow (which has some stupid and unnecessary studded metal rings around it) does not bend! You people should know by now that it is the bow which bends, while the string doesn't stretch. But of course this bow doesn't bend, because it's limbs are made of metal! And thick one at that. Yes, there were some metal bows in existence, but they were very thin in order to bend. This is not.
3. The string doesn't go anywhere near the end of the bow. Here's a free suggestion to the maker of this picture: next time draw the whole bow, even if it's not going to fill in your final picture frame. Thus you can make sure that the string would actually attach to the bow arc, and not to the  toes of the archer. This is not even hard since when drawing with computer you can easily draw over the picture area.
4. Four finger Mediterranean grip is wrong. It should use only three fingers. Four finger grip is an amateur mistake.
5. The drawn string and arrow are not anywhere near the place there should be. A quick tip: it should be where the red ring points, the mouth area of the archer. Thus she would be able to even aim. And yes, it goes in the way of those sexually opened buffy lips.
6. How do you explain that the arrow holds here? It flows on thin air! It should be on the other side of the bow, of course. This may be the most common archery mistake of all time.
7. Why is she holding her thumb upwards? Is she liking this picture? Since I sure as Hades don't!
8. Even more ridiculous of the fact that the arrow floats in the air makes this mistake, the overly large arrow tip, which would weight a ton and not fly properly anywhere.
9. The arrow also lacks proper fletching (those three feathers at the back end of the arrow you know?)
10. What is this? It reminds the leather strip some of the Jews roll around their forearm when asking their god favours. But as an archery bracer, no, it doesn't work.
11. The form of the archer is so bad it would be very difficult to shoot in this position. This over-sexualised shape is straight from the catalogue of "How to draw fantasy females which boys can drool at" (I'm going to think it really exists, since this is so common). Maybe she is forced permanently in this curved back position, since she has the metallic unbendable and immovable torture device hammered on her? Poor thing. But fortunately she won't suffer for long, since she's dying of anorexia (and anemia, based on her colourless complexion).
12. No quiver anywhere to be seen. An archer should be able to carry arrows somewhere, have you heard about that? And the proper place for a quiver is the waist belt, not the back of the archer.

Good:

This section is closed for the time being, since I have lost my faith in humanity because of all these mistakes. Shame on you!

War of the arrows (Korean movie)

This is from a Korean movie I just watched with my friends. It's called "War of the arrows", or then "Arrow, the ultimate weapon", of which the first one is much better as a name, but I don't know which one is more accurate translation of Choi-jong-byeong-gi Hwal (Google translate didn't help at all).

As a movie, it's pretty good, but as an archery film, superb! Never before have I seen so much, so good and so interesting archery in a movie! This is almost like Lars Andersen coming to the big screen!

And which is also great, is that the archers are now in the main role, which rarely happens in movies. Usually it's always the swordsman who gets all the glory, while archers are just extras shooting some shower of arrows at the beginning of a battle. In reality archers were much more important than that, they continued to shoot enemies throughout the battle, and not with arrow rains, but with direct shots.

I will start with the good parts, since there are many of those in this movie:

1. Mongolian release. I have not seen very many Asian archery movies (many kung-fu movies have archers in them), so the usual one to be seen in films set in Europe is the Mediterranean release. There is probably not the single best way to draw the bow, I happen to like Mediterranean more, since it is easier and don't require excessive equipment. Mongolian release needs a thumb ring, otherwise the archers thumb will become sore very quickly. Anyway, Mongolian release is done right in almost all scenes of this movie.
2. The arrow is on the right side of the bow. It's both right and right, since it's right to keep the arrow on the right side (and not left) of the bow, while shooting in Asian style. Asian people's all seem to keep arrow on the right and use their thumb to keep it in place there. It allows faster re-shooting, as Andersen demonstrated. Europeans keep the arrow on the left side of the bow.
3. Asian side quiver. They used their arrows "on the back" yes, but not over the shoulder, where the arrows are hard to draw from. Instead their quivers were designed to keep the arrows only from their tip area, but still firmly in place, so they could be tilted to almost horizontal way.
4. Keeping an arrow in the bow hand. Usually in movies people only carry arrows in their quivers, but in this scene the main character has one more arrow in his bow hand. It's faster to shoot from there. Even faster woud be from the string hand (Andersen again...)
5. Use of special arrows. This is called "half-pounder" in the movie, and it has a chisel like tip. Broad flat blades were used in arrow tips for different purposes. This is used like a "super arrow" in the movie, which I could criticize a bit, since it seems too powerful, shattering small tree trunks! But still, it's very nice to see some special arrows in films, since we always get only the regular ones, and 'fire arrows', which were more sparsely used than movies makes you think.
6. THIS ONE! Fantastic! The main hero shoots with broken arrows! He makes an arrow guide from a bamboo stalk, and uses it to shoot half arrows. The arrow guide is tied to his thumb, so it doesn't fly when he releases the arrow. Superb!

This movie cannot escape mistakes entirely:

1. The main character shoots sideways many times. You can clearly see where his arrow string touches his clothes. It's not very good form. He also shoots the bow vertically too.
2. In this picture the main antagonist has a poor form. He uses the Mediterranean release, but with four fingers. So it's wrong for a Mediterranean, and also wrong for an Asian. Most other times he uses the Mongolian grip properly. The arrow's fletching inside this same circle is also damaged to the point that there are almost none feathers left.
3. The arrow is on the right side of the antagonists bow, but he keeps it in place with both thumb and index finger. That will hurt the index finger, if released. I admit that it is harder to keep on the right side of the bow, just with a thumb. Maybe this picture is from the early stages of filming and the actor got better over filming time?
4. Back quivers. Most characters in this film have them. Almost all soldiers carry a bow anyway. But back quivers were not used like this, not in Asia either. The protagonist has a better one.

Summa summarum:

This is a very good archery movie, and I recommend it to everyone even remotely interested in archery, history, warfare or Asian cultures in general.

Ashe the Frost Archer (from League of Legends)

OH, BY THE GODS OF EVERY RELIGION IN EVERY PLANET THAT HAS LIFE ON IT!!!
This is horrible beyond any words. And I have a broad vocabulary. I will still try...

This picture... this picture might very well be the worst piece of imagery my eyes have ever have the unpleasantness to witness. Not only it's the worst archery picture of all time by far, I also cannot get in my mind any worse memory relating to a visual stimulant.

The maker of this picture, who is not entitled to be called an artist, not even a concept artist, has absolutely zero knowledge relating to anything he's trying to portray; correct anatomy, originality, artisticality, archery, realism, interestingness and sense of style all shine of their absence while overused clichés, childish sexism and all kinds of physical errors are well represented. Actually the knowledge of how to draw different 'things' of the maker of this picture must be below zero, so bad this is.


Mistakes, oh so bad and oh so numerous:

1. The bow is being held in horizontal way, which is a very bad mistake. But it's nothing to compared to the second one!
2. The string goes OVER the bow arm!!! What? Excuse me, but what again?!? Even a basic understanding of bows and archery would tell anyone that the bow string does not go over the bow arm. It would go under if the bow would be held in this stupid position, and it would be on the inside of the arm if the bow would being held properly in vertical position. Shame on you, this is the worst mistake you can make! But oh no, it's not the last! There are plenty others.
3. This is not any real grip of the string. Of course the maker of this picture (let's call that boy "motp") had no idea of the real grip, and it would be difficult to do in this angle anyway. Our oversexualized fantasy female here is pulling the string with two fingers, instead of three, and more importantly, her hand is the wrong way up. This is a very weak grip.
4. Motp also hasn't looked any reference because he doesn't know which holds the arrows on the string. Of course the archer's string hand! The arrows here doesn't even go anywhere near the hand, they just kind of are on the string somewhere. The aim would be uncontrollable and they arrows wouldn't even probably keep on the string while drawing.
5. Hasn't motp ever even seen a real arrow? I think not, since even a child can draw better arrows. Everybody knows that an arow has a tip (the sharp often triangular shaped thing on it's front end), a shaft (a rod of wood) and fletching (the three feathers at the back end), but these arrows lack the last one altogether. Yes, the arrows can fly without the fletching, but first of all, nobody ever would've made them like this, unless they are uneducated punks, and secondly without the fletching the arrows flight is not very controllable. It will fly more straight with the fletching.
6. The arrow tips weight a kilo! They are way too thick. Not only they would drastically reduce the flight distance of the arrows to some lousy five meters, they would also turn the arrows tip down while flying, so if they somehow magically would hit any target, they would hit it with the right side up front. Also this thick arrowheads make them harder to penetrate any form of defensive equipment. Even spearheads, which can be much longer, are never this thick. It would just be completely stupid. And waste of material. These arrow tips are also too large in every other direction, despite of the proposed perspective of the picture.
7. But it doesn't matter, since Ashe is using three arrows at once. And when she's not even holding the nocks (the little things on the back end of the arrows which have slots where the bow string goes, and which nobody knows of unfortunately) in her hand, she has none control over where the arrows will fly. Absolutely zero. She wouldn't hit a barn door from three feet distance. The arrows are also positioned pointing all in different directions, and as everyone should know, aiming at more than one direction (Yes, aim at them!) at the time is impossible, so all these arrows would miss their targets by a wide margin. Good job, motp! Not really, this was sarcasm.
8. Since this girl is called "the frost archer" her bow is probably supposed to be made of ice. Well... no, and... no again. This is fantasy of course, and maybe it's some magical ice, but still it's beyond stupid. Can't the arrows just have some frost magic on them, does the arrows and the bow have to be made of real ice? It doesn't make any sense. You know, there are fantasy, and then there are this thing, which would be called unreality, when everything is so unreal that it's only stupid. Look for Lord of the Rings, that's high fantasy for you, which is realistic at the same time! That's the stuff most people like, not counting some silly boys just hitting puberty of course.
9. Where is the quiver (the holder for the rest of the arrows in case you didn't know that either). And, as you also didn't know, it should be here, at the waist level, hanging from a belt. Back quivers are just a pop culture myth. In other pictures of this character I have seen that – of course – she has a back quiver. What else to expect from a game this stupid anyway.
10. This stance is a very bad archery form. I can't imagine any more silly position of one's limbs and body than this. It would be stupid and impossible to do without assistance even while staying still. But now she's also trying to shoot arrows while being in this uncomfortablest of positions. Of course we all – who are not guided by hormones alone – know that the only reason this character is in this position, is that the motp is a young horny male who wants to draw "beautiful" (= unrealistic, sexist, clichéd and childish manga characters)  females who he can drool at. That's why she hasn't got any real clothes on her. That's why she's positioned in the infamous boobs-and-butt pose (Oh, don't know what that is? Try Escher Girls for once!).

"Good", hahahahaha, are you kidding me?

Absolutely positively negative amount of goodness can be found in this drawing. It's so profoundly an epic fail that when I tried to make a corrected version of it, I couldn't. I just ended up censoring the whole picture, since it gives a totally mistaken and erroneous view of archery, bows and arrows. Correcting it would mean starting all over again from scratch, and probably getting a thorough brainwash before it, since this monstrosity has left some deep scars in all of it's viewers psyche. This drawing is harmful to the portrayal of archery, women, fantasy genre and to the society as whole, and the motp should be in jail because of it.

Stupid picture from stupid game.

Mountain archress

This woman has no sense of cold, or then she just don't know how to dress properly to different weather conditions. Either way, pretty silly outfit for snowy mountains, in reality it would result in freezing death. But of course this is just a fantasy illustration, made by a boy(ish man), made for boy(ish men). That outfit would be pretty stupid in any other circumstances too... or maybe not in a red lights district.

Mistakes, archery related that is:

1. Her form is almost perfect, except the stance is pretty unstable looking. Why the bending knee? It's trying to be cool, I get it, but it is not the most optimal. Well, that's not a major problem, so let's move on to next, bigger, one.
2. The bow doesn't bend enough. It does bend somewhat, but it's not enough. I've drawn a comparison where that bow should bend. And that's the bare minimum. Recurve bows can sometimes bend a lot!
3. The arrows are in a back quiver, as usual. Do I need to mention again that it's not practical? Possible I do. And the next time and the time after that.

Good:
The form is not very bad at all. There are a nice parallel line from the tip of the arrow all the way back to the drawing hands elbow. As it should be. A point for that.

Elf woman in photograph

What's wrong with this picture? It's a woman dressed up in a fantasy costume, I don't know if she's cosplaying any character, probably just a regular cliché'd female elf archer, which the fantasy worlds are always full of.

Mistakes:
There's really only one. The stance. Why is she crouching like that and thus holding her bow diagonally? That archery form is not really good. Her stance would be much more solid if she would stand on her two legs, back straight and all. She's also aiming very low, is her enemy coming out of water? A watergoblin (Vesihiisi, like we say in Finland)?
There seem to be a small trend that regue-like characters have to crouch when shooting with a bow, and actually, they must be in crouching position at all times, whatever they're doing. In games like the Elder Scrolls series, when player crouches, he/she gets more power out of his/her bow. That's so horribly wrong! The power of the draw actually weakens if you crouch and hold your bow horizontally, like they do in Elder Scrolls games.

Good:
Her archery form is otherwise good. I just see no point of being crouched, and even on so slippery surface. There would be a much better place for shooting a few steps back, not in the wet stones of the riverbank.

Mulan (Disney's)

This archery scene is only made for fun in Disney's Mulan animation of course, but they still made some mistakes in it.


Mistakes:

1. Both Mulan and captain Shang shoot left handed in this scene, while they are otherwise right handed.
2. Mulan uses a Mediterranean grip, which is wrong in two ways. Mediterranean grip uses three fingers, Mulan uses only two. The second mistake, they didn't use that release method in China. Asians used mostly Mongolian release, which utilises the thumb holding the string. It requires a thumb ring.
3. Captain Shang shoots three arrows in this scene to show how well the Chinese soldiers must learn archery (and after a training montage Mulan and all the others have learned this trick). Shooting three arrows is possible, but hitting three flying targets and then nailing them to another target is not. Of course, but this is a fun scene, so I won't complain about it anymore. Although I really put the red ring here because there's nothing to keep those arrows holding there.
4. Shang uses four finger grip, but again, it's necessary in this three-arrow-shot. Anyway, usually using four fingers is not a good idea, since it turns the string too much and can effect the flight of the missile. But the real mistake here is the Mediterranean style instead of Mongolian.
5. Arrows don't have any space behind their fletching for fingers to grip and the fletchings do touch both Mulan's and Shang's fingers while they draw.

Good, or... at least okay I guess:

1. Recurve bow, since Asians mostly used these. Although it doesn't look much like a Chinese bow.
2. Hip quiver, again different than real Chinese quivers, but at least it isn't a standard Hollywood back quiver.
3. The arrows are on the left side of the bow here. It would be right if they were shooting with European style, and the bow would be properly on their left hand. But now it's actually not wrong either, since Chinese (as most Asians) shoot the arrow on the thumb side (right side, but in this case, when the characters are mirrored, on the left side). This is most probably a coincidence, they certainly didn't think that much while drawing this scene. It just happened to go right this once. Arrow on the wrong side of the bow is one of the most common mistakes.

And finally a photo from the beginning of the 20th Century. Manchu archers demonstrating Chinese style archery. Note the arrow on the right side, "overdraw" style of shooting, very long fletching on the arrows and typical East Asian quivers with arrows held in place only at their tip.

Androgynous manga elf archer drawing

This manga elf looks like a girl, but it's probably supposed to be a man, because it lacks the characteristic ten gallon boobs the Japanese perverts (and Western youngsters imitating them) usually draw on women.

Mistakes:

1. The grip could not be more wrong. The maker has no idea whatsoever regarding to archery forms. The hand grabs the arrow like a pen, and completely on the fletching. So bad it hurts.
2. This bow has two bowstrings! Two (2)!! What? Why?!?
3. The bow doesn't bend. Only the string(s!) stretch here. A very common mistake
4. The arrow is on the wrong side of the bow, is too low, is too short, has too thick tip...

Also the stance is ridiculous and no quiver to be seen, but one could argue that it's hidden somewhere behind the floating curtains this character has draped over him/herself.

Blue spiky archer drawing

 

This blue-glowing man with mirrored face halves has some strange spikes growing out of him. If that happened to me, I would go to the doctor immediately. Maybe he should too.

Mistakes:

1. Most probably unintentional left-handedness.
2. Ridiculous bow constructed of blue spikes which hold together only with magic.
3. Arrows which cannot be nocked on the string since they have to pointy ends!
4. Reverse grip of the string hand. And utterly wrong in all other ways too.
5. Quiver on the back. And no fletching on the arrows.

Blindfolded archer drawing

This blindfolded albino anorectic archer might not be stylistically very badly drawn, but she has other issues relating to her archery.


Mistakes:

1. She's left handed. I don't know if this is intentional or not. Usually it isn't, so I count is as a mistake.
2. The attachment of the string to the bow is way too complicated and unusable.
3. The bow itself is a branch of a tree, which hasn't been worked into a bow (bows are not made of tree branches anyway). This shoots very poorly and will break.
4. The 'archers bracer' is on the wrong side of the forearm, so it doesn't do its job.

Good:
A hip quiver.

3D archress with falcon

The second one in a row of bad archer illustrations labelled as good is this 3D woman with sexist attire and a hawk interrupting her archery. But she doesn't mind, since she has a permanent smile on her face.

Mistakes:

1. The arrow on the wrong side of the bow. It wouldn't keep here half a second. It's also some 10 cm too short. And it's tip is too big and heavy.
2. The bow has a bad construction with curves all over the place. It's also made of unknown materials which look like bronze and precious stones. Not materials suitable for making a bow at all.
3. The Mediterranean grip is wrong with one finger missing.
4. The string is not drawn close to a mouth of the archer. Aim of this shot would be bad.
5. Again, no arrows in a quiver anywhere.

Sexist manga female archer drawing

Some picture I found on the Internet in a group of 30 "amazing archer illustrations" or some other bullcrap it was titled. Every single one of them were ridiculously full of inaccuracies, mistakes, errors and stupidity beyond any measure. I got angry. I still am. I'm going to post a few of them in a row next, starting with this manga one with ridiculously skimpy "clothing" or "armour", dislocated hip, over exaggerated legs and pair of plastic boobs the size of her tiny expressionless doll head.


Mistakes, regarding to archery:

1. The fistmele (or brace height) of this bow is two times bigger than it should. It should not go to the elbow, only half way there.
2. The arrow is once again on the wrong side of the bow. It's also not on the bow gripping fist as it should, but at the side of it.
3. This is not a proper grip of an arrow. The fletching is located too back the arrow so that the gripping hand touches it. Wrong all the way.
4. The string is not attached to the bow in any method. It just appears under some blue thing, which might be ice, or magic crystal or some other stupid thing.
5. What is this bow made of anyway? It the brown thing is wood, then this is very very badly made bow which could break in any moment. And whatever the blue material is, it's not doing any good for the bow. Stick to real materials please.
6. Where are the rest of her arrows? No quiver anywhere to be seen.

Good:
Absolutely nothing. I should really stop this "good"-category altogether, since in these pictures, there aren't any of it.

Bard statue (from Hobbit)

This is a statuette of Bard the Bowman from the Hobbit movies. This Orlando Bloom look-a-like has some serious issues with his plastic copy.


Mistakes:

1. The bow is way overdrawn, ridiculously so. I've drawn the proper draw distance for the bow in light white for comparison. This much overdrawing would require an immense amount of strength, and it could probably even break the bow. If the bow holds the stress, the accuracy of the shot would not be very good. This would also require huge arrows, the size of a javelin (throwing spear) almost. Which brings us to the next point...
2. This long arrows cannot be carried on a back quiver. They are impossible to draw from there. They must be attached to somewhere else. Otherwise Bard has to remove his quiver from his back in order to draw new arrows from there.
3. The grip here is as flawed as it is in the movie, so in this regard this is an accurate reproduction of the movie character. Sad that he has to use this stupid reverse grip and draws with only two fingers. Certainly he would not have the strength in just two fingers to perform this huge overdraw. And reverse grip is less powerful anyway than the usual one.

Good:

Nothing really

Bard the Bowman (from Hobbit)

Hoah. Bard the Bowman. He who killed the mightiest dragon of all time, Smaug the Golden, in J.R.R. Tolkiens the Hobbit of course. Peter Jackson's movie version is now under my magnifying glass.
Bard should be one of the best archers in Middle Earth, at least among humans. Still his archery form is terrible and has all kinds of various errors. And the thing which he builds in seconds to kill the dragon, let me get to that in a minute...


Mistakes:

1. Sideways shooting. Apparent in pictures A, B, E and F. Bard shoots a lot of times sideways, which is a very bad technique only used in movies which don't do their research properly (i.e. almost all of them). In this way the bow cannot be fully drawn since the flank of the archer gets in the way of the bowstring. With a longbow, like bards', this is extremely bad form.
2. Bard uses two finger grip most of the time. This is also a bad idea, since with three fingers the grip would be sturdier and more powerful. Why use just two fingers? Bard needs extreme force in order to penetrate Smaugs thick scales, so using a two finger grip and shooting sideways are very stupid decisions. 
3. The moviemakers probably thought that because the Hobbit movie has so many different archer characters (Legolas, Tauriel, Kili, Bard), they had to invent some unique styles for each of them. This is completely unnecessary and leads to stupid decisions. Bard has given a 'style' of shooting with his string hand turned upside down. There is no proper evidence that this technique would have been ever used in history. This is because it's unnecessarily hard and useless form. It also makes the bow tilt more than usual (leading ultimately to 'sideways shooting').
4. In this promotional photo Bard grips the string with four fingers. Four finger grip is a beginner's mistake. Three fingers are enough, the least strong finger of the hand doesn't add to the force of the shot, it only make the string rotate around itself more than necessary when released. This can then effect the flight of the missile.
5. The arrow in this shot is on the wrong side of the bow. It is because the arrow is obviously computer generated and the editor don't know anything about archery. The arrow seems also a bit too long here. In the picture D you can see how many of the shooting scenes are actually filmed. Without an arrow at all! They are just added with computer in post production. This is a safety reason, and I can be okay with that, but they should ask on which side of the bow the arrow should go, if they don't know.
6. Back quiver. In the scene where Bard tries to shoot Smaug with his bow, he takes all the arrows out of the quiver, and that would be a smart move, since they are harder to get from behind a shoulder. A hip quiver would work just fine.
7. This thing! What is it? Bard's longbow broke in half (conveniently, and the string left untouched), then he stabs the severed limbs of the bow into thick wooden beams! Excuse me, but what?!? He has the strength of ten men, or then the beams are completely rotten, in which case the bow limbs would totally not keep in place there. The limbs are now some meter apart, so how does the string still reach from one end of the bow to another? He also uses his sons shoulder as a rest for the black arrow, which is the size of a spear. This self-made ballista could probably work if the string would be longer and thicker and the bow limbs would be properly mounted. Bot now... well, no. Why didn't Bard use the four-arm ballista, which was on top of some tower already, the one Girion (Bard's ancestor) used to shot black arrows towards Smaug in the first place?

Good:

Nice longbow, sad that it broke. No, you can't make a working ballista from a broken bow in a matter of seconds.

How not to draw an archer

This is both frustrating and alarming. Some guy has made a guide "how to draw an archer" and posted it on DeviantArt, which is notoriously infamous for promoting only lousy unoriginal plagiaristic fan "art" and softcore porn classified under "nude art photography".

This guide is unfortunately completely wrong. Someone has actually took the time to make this "guide" for other people to teach them how to draw archers wrong! Why would anyone do this if they have no idea how a bow works? What made them think that they had the expertise to make themselves an authority on the subject? That is beyond my comprehension.

This is a very bad guide, which should be removed permanently from internet. If you want to learn how to draw an archer who's anatomy is way off (proper height of an adult human would be seven and half times the height of the head, and here it is nine!) which uses a bow that doesn't bend, with a rubber band attached to it, then you can use this one. Otherwise, please use photographs of real archers instead.


Mistakes:

1. The bow doesn't bend here! It is not the string which stretches, but the bow's arc which creates the power to propel the arrow. How is this hard to see? I've drawn a box around the bow in the first picture. The bow arc should bend to the middle of that box, while the string should be at the end of the box. Arrow half way in the middle. Yes, Japanese kyudo bows, which this tries to depict are sometimes even two meters long (daikyu), and their upper limb is much longer that the lower limb, but that doesn't change the principle of bow arcing. Draw the rectangular box around the place where the drawn bow will be, then make a line in the middle. Other side draw the bent bow and other side the string. It's very easy to draw a realistic bow with this method.
2. This picture is drawn after some photographs of kyudo archers, but disappointingly the maker of this picture hasn't noticed the mistakes he made with the bow. Also he hasn't looked the arrow close enough to see that his is wrong. There are again no room for fingers to hold the arrow nock behind the fletching. There should be some 3 cm space there. This figure also has only one spare arrow and not a quiver. I don't consider it a new mistake in this case, since the maker of this picture has just copied it from the photographs he has seen, and kyudo archers do hold one spare arrow in their drawing hand like this and not always carry a quiver. This is of course sports archery, in war japanese would use quivers too, like everybody else who has any brain cells in their cranium.

Good:

Nothing. It's especially harmful to make a guide of how to do something, when you have no idea how it's properly done. Teaching erroneous things is wrong! It's also misleading to call this just a guide how to draw 'an archer'. This should be called (if made properly) "how to draw a Japanese kyudo archer". Since kyudo is a sport and has very little to do with archery in warfare. Also Japanese archery is very different from archery in anywhere else in the world because of the unusual shape and size of the bows.

Guinevere (King Arthur 2004)

Today, Guinevere from King Arthur (2004 movie). This is one of the 106 movies/tv–series/animations made about the Arthurian legends, not the worst, but not the best either. Made by a director no one knows, this movie is most famous for its theatrical poster which had Keira Knightley's bust enlargened in Photoshop. Because sex sells and a small breasted woman is not feminine and sexy enough, according to media.
Anyway, the movie was claimed to be based on most recent archaeological and historical evidence, but it ended up being a collection of blatant mistakes and errors. It takes – as the first adaptation of the story – the stance that King Arthur lived in the Late Antiquity (300–500 C.E.), instead of High Middle Ages (1000–1300), and this was more realistic and interesting approach in my mind.

While everything else from the error of calling Picts "Woads" (now this is the real people who painted themselves with blue war paint, often misidentified to be made of the woad plant) to their use of trebuchets (large counterweight powered stone throwing siege machines), which were only invented much later in the Middle Ages, and to the fantasy outfits everyone's wearing, archery in this movie is pretty well portrayed. Even surprisingly so!

I will start with good points this time, since there really are many!

Good:

Keira Knightley has learned archery well from her trainer. She really knows how to shoot. This is very uncommon in movies, where actors don't pay much attention to their archery teachers, or then they don't have those at all. Knightley's form is just perfect! This is because...

1. Both her arms and the arrow form one parallel line.
2. The draw is full and the string is drawn very close to face.
3. Mediterranean grip is perfect with three fingers around the string.
4. The position of the arrow is right, the cock fletch (marked with blue arrow) points towards the face and the other two fletches point up and down. Even this minor detail is right here! Bravo!
5. The arrow goes around the bow at the left side, resting on the bow gripping fist.

Mistakes:

There are some mistakes though, but some of them are not the actress's fault at all. Rather director's or costume/prop department's.

1. The arrow tip is not sharp. This is of course a safety reason, since it could be deadly if sharpened (it still can, but you wouldn't be as much dead as after getting hit by a sharp tipped arrow). This is not a major issue, and I'm okay with it. Even I don't want the actors to die... maybe extras are expendable though.
2. In the last picture Knightley is overdrawing her bow. This is probably not very powerful recurve bow, like in movies they never are, and even a woman can easily overdraw it. Shooting becomes a bit more difficult if you do this. The arrow tip touches the bow hand, which it should not do.
3. The actress holds the bow a little too high. Her hand is not properly on the grip, looks like she has got the bow in her hand a half a second ago and must shoot like her life would depend on it. But this is not the case in this scene of the movie, where the Picts are shooting a volley of arrows. Keeping hand on the grip makes the bow's limbs bend more equally and the shot is more stable.
4. Where are her arrows? There are no quiver anywhere to be seen, and no spare arrows tucked to a belt or anything. Only two swords for 'coolness factor', but of worthless use.
5. Guinevere has at least two bows in this movie, which are depicted in the middle pictures. Both are recurves, but the first one is more of a "longbowish" type, since it's obviously quite long. We don't know much about the Picts, but I'm fairly certain that they didn't use recurve bows, such as the last one here. It is primarily an Eastern invention. Picts would've probably used simple D-shaped self bows. Strangely, the extras at the background in the last picture, are using self bows! Maybe they thought that a recurve bow looks 'cooler', and thus the main character has to have it. This might be the case in many movies of our era.