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!

Avatar the last bow bender

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

Mistakes:

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

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

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

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

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

What is this madness?

This is the worst I've seen in a long time. Refreshing my memory, since Thursday, February 7th, this year. So not very long ago. Anyway, it makes me want to puke, and I hate puking.  

Mistakes:

1. This pukesy thing is probably supposed to be a bow of some kind but I really can't tell how. Needless to say, it wouldn't work in real life.

2. This ridiculous stringy string is made of rubber.

3. That sad joke of pulling the bow is so utterly awful I don't know if I should laugh or cry. I have nothing else to say.

Why most archers have hoods?

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

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

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

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

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

5. Back quiver. And bad fletching on arrows.

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

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

They can't make Lara dirtier than this!

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

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

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

Hello Mr. Elrondson

The face is Elrond (Hugo Weaving) from the Lord of the Rings movies. Everything else is imagination.

Mistakes:

1. Overarm bowstring, noooooooooooo! Don't do this ever again, pleeeeeease!

2. Reverse grip, no, nobody should do this either. Is he also gripping the bowstring with four fingers? As if he's never shot before.

3. Inflexible bow, this is a very bad mistake. Bows bend people, bows bend. Also, why is he pulling the string if he's not aiming at a target? Nobody does this, since it wastes energy unnecessary.

4. Back quiver. I'd rather not see this one again.

Dryad from Witcher 3

This is the dryad Morenn from the Witcher game series, and the picture is from the third game.
It is technically a good digital drawing, but the archery is technically not good. It has mistakes:

 

1. The arrow would fall off of here easily because the bow is in sideways position.

2. She's wasting a huge lot of energy by pulling the bow when she's not actually shooting. Don't do this. The grip is almost a thumb grip, but a little erroneously drawn.

3. The bow is wasting it's potential when the string is not attached to the nocks in the very end of the bowarms.

4. There are no arrows anywhere else to be seen, and no quiver.

Also the bowstring looks very thick, but I have not given it a mistake point. But maybe should have.

 

I have continued my criticism with other dryads of the Witcher world in a later post, that you can find here.

What's the point of fire arrows in Mordor?

This may be a Mordor orc or a goblin or something. I don't really care. But what I do care about are the mistakes!

1. This bow is stolen from Lara Croft. The young version, with more clothes and less boobs than usual. Also less of a bow, since it's made out of a bunch of sticks. It would be quite easy to make a bow from one piece of wood, but maybe orcs want to make everything crappy on purpose. Then again in many fantasy lores they are good craftsmen and smiths, but it doesn't really show since their products are terrible and typically unusable crap. Like this bunch of sticks here.

2. Are all these arrows used thousand times since the fletching of orc arrows is always so bad? Too little space between the fletching and the nock maybe be half the reason for that. And what is the purpose of keeping the arrow between teeth? It would seriously be in the way of the bowstring while shooting, and getting the arrow from there is not in any way faster than from some other places. I would even guess it would be slower to get it from there. Faster would be to keep several arrows in your hand already, either the bow hand or the string hand (the latter is even faster of the two).

3. He has a back quiver and a hip quiver, but why? If you are used to a hip quiver, why to have also a back quiver, isn't it just confusing? Why not two hip quivers, people (and orcs) have two hips after all?

4. The grip is wrong, two fingers used instead of three and the hand is palm down when it should be the other way around in this position. Also nobody would want to spend their energy unnecessarily by pulling the string half way back at this point when the bow isn't pointing anywhere near the direction of shooting.

5. Fire arrows. Stupid fire arrows again. What are he going to set on fire? The rocks? The volcano? It is already on fire! And there's nothing else that can be burning in a range of miles around him. The land of Mordor is completely barren. Fire arrows were not shot against people, since it's completely unnecessary, people die perfectly well from hits of regular arrows, and actual fire arrows would do less damage to people than normal arrows, because of the structure of their arrowtips.