Do not lean back when shooting!

 

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

Mistakes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

There's a hood, but no robin

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

Mistakes:

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

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

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

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

5. Spare arrows or a quiver do not exist.
 

You believe in horoscopes, but not in physics?

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dryads from Witcher's world

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

On to the archery mistakes:

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

 

 

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

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

 

 

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

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

 

 

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

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

 

This is it for now, see you next time!

School girl Link with aviator hood

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

Mistakes:

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

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

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

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

The new Tomb Raider cosplay

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

Mistakes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vaguely Medievalish archer

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

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

2. The arrow tip is way too large.

3. Fletching is missing.

4. Reverse grip, wrong.

5. Back quiver, also wrong.

Some kind of ranger

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

Mistakes:

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

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

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

Hunger Games revisited

One of the earliest posts on this blog of mine (the fifth one to be exact) was a review of archery of Hunger Games (the first film probably), based on one picture of the character of Katniss. That blog post was written over five years ago in Janyary 2015, and it got a comment now in 2020. Because of the comment that heavily criticised my critique, I decided to do a revisit to that blog post and look the source material again. So here it is, a revisited Hunger Games archery review. Yes, based on the same picture again, I don't want to actually watch the movie.

Here is a little bit shortened version of the original blog post. Nothing of importance is removed and the original blog post is still there if you want to read it.

 

Mistakes:

1. Katniss is supposed to be extremely skilled with a bow, but still in this photo she doesn’t really know what she’s doing. The first mistake which causes other errors, is that she has nocked the arrow too high on the string. The arrow should be as close to the center point of the bow string as possible. It cannot be in the exact center, since the hand holding the bow forces the arrow travel above it, so it’s half a fist away from the center. But that’s not much. In this picture the arrow is way too high, which makes the whole bow tilt backwards, as you can clearly see. The red arrow number 1 shows where would be the correct nocking point on the string for arrows.

2. The red arrow number 2 shows where the shaft of the arrow should lie while the bow is being drawn. Something has just happened here, and it’s bad. The arrow has fallen from atop the bow hand and now the archer has no control over where the arrow will fly. She has even tried to guide the arrow with her index finger, which is a beginners technique, but it failed apparently. Maybe it’s because the bow is so backwards tilted that she has difficulties trying to keep it straight with her bow hand.

3. The arrows are made for men with longer arms, and not particularly measured for the actress in question. The red arrow number 3 shows where the arrow could end for her. The longer arrow allows bigger draw, but that requires more length to the arms of the archer.

4. What is this fletching? It’s quite damaged. Maybe these arrows have been used many times for shooting in thick bushes or something similar which would damage the feathers.

5. Back quiver is especially bad for hunting in thick woods, since if you try to be quiet and unobtrusive, drawing the arrows from a back quiver has a high probability to bump with tree branches and other forestly matter, thus creating sound which would alert animals, and humans too, if you’re hunting with your own species like in this example perhaps. A hip quiver would be more practical, as always.


In the second picture I’ve drawn the proper alignment of the longbow and it’s arrow nocked in the correct point on the string.


This was the comment I got:

Pixa Pirata: "You are incorrect, and should stop talking out your backside. If she were to shoot your way, the arrow would immediately go up at a 20-30 degree angle give or take a few degrees upon release. With the tips of the bow straight up and down, the arrow needs to nock level with the rest, which typically puts the arrow well above the center point. Long arrows are fine, and the fletching is feathers, which is typical for someone who made their own bow and arrows as her character did in the movie. Back quivers are for people that move around, not like people who stand still and shoot a target indoors, like you pretend to do. You are just utterly wrong on every point here."

Now I do appreciate all feedback, but when it is misguided and hostile, I don't appreciate it as much as when it is benign and constructive criticism. Let's deconstruct this comment in order to get the points from there.

"If she were to shoot your way, the arrow would immediately go up at a 20-30 degree angle give or take a few degrees upon release."

I disagree and I'll show you why in a moment.

"With the tips of the bow straight up and down, the arrow needs to nock level with the rest, which typically puts the arrow well above the center point."

I know this and I acknowledged it in the blog post. I said: "It [the arrow] cannot be in the exact center [of the string], since the hand holding the bow forces the arrow travel above it, so it’s half a fist away from the center." Maybe this was badly worded, since English is not my native language, but I think I made it clear that the arrow will be nocked above the center of the string. Not by much though. Katniss have nocked it way too much above the center here. Now I will demonstrate.

I made this new diagram to better illustrate how poor Katniss' form really is. I turned the image for better viewing and replaced the missing limb of the bow (from outside the picture frame) with a copy of the other limb of the bow. I put the bow inside a rectangle so you see it's level and symmetrical.
There's one red line marking the centre of the rectangle (and bow inside it). I never claimed the arrow should be at the exact center of the bow and string, since that is not the case. Archer's hand will hold the bow from the center, so the arrow has to go above the bow hand. That's why it's also nocked above the center point of the bowstring. I estimated the proper point for nocking to be 46% of the length of the string from the upper nock of the bow. That leaves 54% of the string under the arrow. This is about the point I showed in the original blog post too.

Now Jennifer Lawrence has nocked her arrow at approximately 38% of the length of the string from the upper nock of the bow, leaving 62% of the string under the bow. This is way too much, and by looking at the picture I would estimate the arrow should be about ten centimeters lower on the string. Nocking the arrow too high causes serious problems with shooting. If Katniss is supposed to be an expert archer, this is a very poor image to illustrate that. She looks like a total newbie. I wonder why on Earth did they choose that failed picture as a promotional still for the film?

Let's continue to other pieces of criticism.

"Long arrows are fine"

Long arrows are used in some native cultures for hunting fish for example. There is no added benefit for this long arrows in a scenario Katniss is put in. While she obviously can use these very long arrows, shorter ones would be easier to use for her, and this just makes it look these arrows were made for somebody with much longer arms. Those long arrows would be extremely difficult tu pull out of a back quiver too. In order for that to succeed the arrows cannot be much longer than the outstreched arm of the archer.

"and the fletching is feathers, which is typical for someone who made their own bow and arrows as her character did in the movie."

I didn't say that feather fletching wouldn't be fine. I said that these feathers look very worn out. Maybe she uses arrows that have been shot many times already? Maybe there's an explanation for this in the movie, but probably they've just been used for practise of the actress.

Look at that fletching, it is in terrible shape compared to a new one.

"Back quivers are for people that move around, not like people who stand still and shoot a target indoors, like you pretend to do."

Historically there's very little evidence for the use of back quivers at all. There is no grounds for a statement that a back quiver would be for people who move around. I think hip quivers are exceptionally better for moving around than back quivers, for several reasons. Most peoples in history have used hip quivers, both on foot and on horseback, and most archery used in actual warfare was pretty mobile. Not at all like the stationary sports archery of today (where they do use back quivers). And I didn't pretend to do anything. I mostly shoot outdoors anyway.

"You are incorrect, and should stop talking out your backside. [...] You are just utterly wrong on every point here."

As I just demonstrated, I was actually right on every point I made. You also didn't comment on mistake no. 2, since you knew I were right on that one too. It was about the arrow falling off from the top of her hand. Here:

Pretty terrible. Beginners mistakes.

I think that's all for this time. Thank you all for commenting. I do this for you. ;)

Six shooting archery in Robin Hood – Men in Tights

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

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

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

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

Archery in Thorgal comics

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

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

Now to the archery mistakes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That's not the way to string a bow

 

A Spanish (probably they want to call themselves Catalonians) historical reenactment group called Barcino Oriens who try to recreate imperial Roman army and civilian life in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE does a very poor job of representing archery. And when I say very poor, I mean absolutely abysmal.

It should be a crime to teach something if you have absolutely no clue of what you are talking about. This man here shows how he thinks a bow is stringed. This is not how it's done. That is utterly and completely wrong and he is plain ignorant about it. It is totally impossible to shoot that way, and if it would be a real bow (I mean not made of plastic), and if he somehow got the string to keep in place while drawing, the bow could break. Fortunately the string will slip off of the bow nocks if he tried to pull the string that way.

I of course commented on that, since it was on Facebook, and I like to educate people. The answer was as usual, hostile:

"Imposible! It's only one way this!" is barely an understandable sentence. I know their native language is Catalan, and not English, but neither is mine. The laughing smiley (I heard the diginatives call them emojis nowadays, but I still call them smileys) is by my (bow shooting) friend.

I patiently gave them an explanation in pictures, since if we don't have a common language, that should work:

I just posted it, so I'm now waiting for their answer, probably tomorrow we'll see. Maybe I'll update this post, but probably I have better things to do.

I don't want to comment on the quality of their reenactment, since it's not the subject of this blog (maybe I'll start another one in the future?), but let's just say that if Catalonia did separate from Spain, we would not lose much.

UPDATE

They deleted their picture without any comment. I hope they learned their lesson.

UPDATE

They answered me later in Facebook, and it seems that they learned how to string a bow. Nice to see that I taught somebody to do it right.

Archery in Trine game series

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The cover of Trine 2 (2011). Mistakes:

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

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

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

The cover for Trine 3 (2015). Mistakes:

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

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

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

4. The thief has bracers on both forearms.

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

Mistakes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mistakes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Camouelfage?

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

Mistakes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

7. No quiver or other arrows anywhere.

8. The bow is held sideways.

Not such a smooth criminal at all.