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.