Could be D&D elf ranger

This looks again like some D&D character art, but can’t be sure. Anyway, a basic leather clad green–brown wood elf ranger with a bow, long blonde hair flowing below a hood and a funny cloak made of tree leaves apparently. But what kind of bow is he holding? It’s very strange indeed, the size is of a longbow, but it has the ears (upper and lower tip) of a recurve bow. The grip part is from a longbow again. Kind of a mix between European and Asiatic styles. Could work, but should maybe bend a little bit more in this picture.

But now to the main issues.

Mistakes:

1. The form of the archer is completely wrong. I guess that the maker of this picture have looked at some Japanese archery photos, but they have nothing to do with European or any other Asian archery styles. The Japanese shooting style with a raised arms are only used with hankyu and daikyu, the Japanese short- and longbows, which are asymmetrical in shape with a much bigger upper part than the lower. And anyway with the Japanese style both the arms should be raised, now this elf only has raised his string arm. This posture is stupid. All his lines are lead to different directions. The line of the arrow (A), points a bit downwards, so the arrow won’t fly very far, only below ten meters. The line of his bow arm (B) crosses with the line of the arrow, since it poins a bit upwards, and this shouldn’t happen. C is the line of the archers string arm, but only forearm, since his upper arm points toward the sky (D). All these lines should be as parallel as possible, so that the drawing of the bow wouldn’t be so hard and tiring and the missile would fly straight to where the archer is aiming at. Now it doesn’t happen.

2. The bow is tilting downwards, because the arrow is nocked on the string too low. A good five centimeters higher would be better. I’ve drawn the red box to show the position of the bow now, and the blue one to tell how it would be better. He’s still aiming downwards but maybe his target is a goblin again?

3. The bowman has a hip quiver, which is much more practical than a back quiver, but this one is positioned horizontally, when it should really be vertically attached to a hip belt or a baldric (belt going over a shoulder). Being horizontal is very bad, since the arrows fall off it easily while running.

4. There are more mistakes! Seems that the archer has gripped the string with only his index finger, which is very hard, since it would require tremendous index finger muscles, which this skinny fellow hasn’t got. The other option is that the bow is very low poundage (i.e. ineffective) and doesn’t require much strength to draw.

5. The arrow is too short for this bow, since the arrow tip just barely reaches over the bow’s back at the front. In fact the archers straightened index finger of his bow hand goes further than the arrow. This should not be the case.

6. The arrow which he is shooting in this picture also doesn’t have fletching at all! The purpose of fletching is to get the arrow flight more straight, so it’s easier to hit a target. Most probably the draughtsman has purposefully left the fletching out, since it would’ve covered the bowman’s face a bit. And of course face can’t be covered by some “unnecessary” feathers! The fletching wouldn’t have hurt, since the feathers can be minimum 1 cm high (and then some 15 cm long), and rounded in profile, so they wouldn’t have even covered his face much.


Good:

The bow does bend and not only the string stretches, which seems like the most common mistake in these archery drawings around Internet. But not much more good to say about this. Maybe I tried to say something good, since this is not terrible, at least if the form of the archers string hand would be correct. But much worse is to come later…

D&D elf character

This elf fellow is – by the style of the art and that particular artist – from Dungeons & Dragons table-top role-playing game’s character rule book.

And I am not entirely happy with it.

Mistakes:

1. The sting of the bow is not attached to the nocks (at the ends of the bow arc), but rather tied around the limbs of the bow (the upper and lower part of the arc). That is very stupid since thus the bow loses much of it’s potential, because the limb parts extending past the nocking points of the string doesn’t effect anything. As if he had a smaller bow, ending where the string is attached. Very stupid indeed, and doesn’t even look good.

2. What are those spikes for? Do he intend to hit enemies with the bow instead of shooting them? Isn’t he supposed to be a superhumanly fast shooter, since he’s an elf? Can’t he shoot the orcs before they get too close? Doesn’t he have any back-up weapon, dagger or short sword for that purpose? Those spikes only make the bow more cumbersome and tiring to use. You should never hit anything with the bow itself anyway, it can brake it.

3. The grip (handle) part of the bow is unnecessarily long, that might not be a big mistake, but there’s no use for that part to be any longer than the bowman’s fist. The bow doesn’t bend at the grip part (or at least it shouldn’t) so if the grip is way too long, that makes the bow less bendy (which can be a bad thing).

4. The arrow is on the wrong side of the bow (looking from archer’s perspective), it could fall off from atop the bow holding hand. The arrow also floats above that fist, but maybe it’s a magic arrow, since it glows and some small lightning bolts surround it. Still, wouldn’t hurt to draw it at realistic level resting on the bow hand.

5. The elf has two back quivers. I get it, weapons held on person’s back are ‘super cool’, although impossible to draw from there, but they don’t seem to care about that in movie and game studios. Arrows are possible to draw from a back quiver – although harder than from a hip quiver, but if he has two back quivers, drawing arrows from the second one is not possible. The quiver, if attached to back, should stick out from behind the archers right shoulder (if he’s right handed, to which we will come later), so he can draw the arrows from his string hand, while the other hand holds the bow. Now, how would he draw the arrows from behind the opposite shoulder of the drawing hand? The head gets in the way and the arrows are further away, so the reach of the arm isn’t just enough to do that. So, why two back quivers, just because it looks even more ‘super cool’ to have two things on someones back to form a cross pattern? Stupid. Could’ve put two hip quivers though, but no, can’t use them, looks less cool.

6. The arrows (showing on the quivers) don’t have long enough nock part (that part coming behing the fletching (feathers). If the fletching goes all the way up to the back end of the arrow, there’s no room for fingers to grasp it and to attach it to the bowstring. There should be at least three centimeters of the arrow shaft behind the fletching.

7. And finally, why is he left handed? Of course there are left handed people around, and probably even elves can be lefties, but they really only make up for some 10 % of the population. However, left handed archers are frequently depicted on drawings and concept art, much more than the percentage would justify. The draughtsmen just didn’t think of making their archers left handed, they just didn’t think handedness at all, and thus made this a mistake.

Good:

The posture of the archer, and the position of the arms are okay, and the release grip of the string hand is almost good. Although he’s aiming a little downwards, which won’t help the arrow to travel super far, but maybe his target is really close, or really small (goblin?).