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.

Atalanta (concept art from Hercules, 2014)

This is a concept of the character Atalanta from the movie Hercules starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, which I just reviewed in my last post.

This concept differs by many factors from the initial costume they made for the actress in the movie. This is far better than the one they ended up making, since this isn't trying to look like armour with only skimpy leather attire, not even covering vital areas. This is an archer, not a front rank soldier, like archer's weren't in history. The khiton (Greek tunic) is far more suitable for Atalanta, but someone just insisted that she had to have a fantasy leather 'boob armour'. Oh well, and they also changed her hair colour from brunette to blonde (some ancient Greeks were blonde, but not most of them)...

Archery mistakes:

1. The bows fistmele (brace height, the space between grip and string) is too wide, this bow is overcurved and the string is too short for it. Anyway, I've drawn a comparison with proper measurements. The bow itself seems to be rather big for a recurve bow anyway. Recurve bow has more potential energy in its arc than the same sized regular bow, so it doesn't have to be as long as a longbow in order to be effective.
2. The arrow is not nocked in the middle of the string, it's way too up. I've corrected that also. Nocking the arrow at proper point benefits the bow's energy in the most effective way and the bows limbs provide the missile equal power.
3. The grip of the bow is unnecessarily long. It really only needs the space for the fist, since the grip doesn't bend, it's the part which doesn't provide the arrow any energy, so keeping it as short as possible is beneficial for the energy transfer from bow to arrow.
4. The fletching of the arrows is too short. There's also not enough room for fingers to hold the arrows nock behind the fletching.
5. The arrows are on a back quiver, which is the only thing they brought from this concept to the appearance of Atalanta in the movie. And it is a mistake.

Good:

The costume is more authentic, if not accurate, than the one they used in the movie, and the bow doesn't have the stupid blades on it's ears. But nothing more really.

Atalanta (from Hercules, 2014)

This is from 2014 movie Hercules starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, the only ex-wrestler who has successfully turned into an actor. Many have tried, but failed miserably, since they have no skills in acting whatsoever. Anyway, in this movie, based on a comic book series: "Hercules, the Thracian Wars" (Thracia was a neighbouring country of Greece in the antiquity) features Atalanta, a Greek heroine (originally Atalante in Greek) who was a virgin huntress famous for her running speed (faster than any man), under the favour of Artemis (also a virgin huntress, and a goddess).

This movie version has dressed Atalanta with a skimpy leather outfit, which imitates armour, but because of the material, and of course the fact that it doesn't cover her belly, it is a useless piece of sexualised cliché fantasy female costume.

Mistakes, concerning about archery:

1. They made the bow also a mêlée weapon with attached blades on both of its ears. That makes the nocks different than usual, with long slits where the string loops go, since if the string would loop around the nocks like usual, the blades would cut through it. The thing I'm complaining about is the whole use of the bow as a mêlée weapon, instead of just shooting arrows with it. The bow can brake! It's not designed for that. It can take even years, but more probably weeks to make a proper recurve bow, so no one in their right mind would want to brake it by hitting enemies with it. Instead making a spear takes a day or so and making replacement shaft for it is super easy. Why don't Atalanta has a backup weapon (I admit a spear is difficult to carry, so someone must choose either a bow or a spear), but a sword or even a dagger would be fine, with a small shield accompanying it. Don't hit with a bow!
2. Atalanta, since she's a heroic character, shoots two arrows at once, several times in this movie. They made it her "trademark" of sorts, as well as the bladed bow. Shooting two arrows at once is in fact possible, but it doesn't do anything else than waste two arrows in place of one. And there isn't infinite amount of arrows. In one movie scene Atalanta shoots two arrows at two different objects, which is impossible, since the arrows would just fly to the same target. It's also not possible to aim at two places at the same time.
3. In this picture her arm is quite low, maybe she's tired or something. But it really should go straight back and continue the parallel line of the arrow.
4. Beginners grip of the string with all four fingers. The mediterranean grip which she should be using only involves three fingers, index finger above the arrow nock, and the two next below it. If using four fingers the string turns around to the right too much which might effect the flight of the missile.
5. Quiver on back. Arrows are hard(ish) and slow(ish) to get from there. A hip quiver would be more practical. They also wouldn't fall off quite so easily while running and jumping, which she certainly is doing a lot in this movie.
6. Shooting sideways. Always a mistake. Repeatedly done in movies. The bow can only be drawn to the point where the string contacts the archers flank. There could be some 10 to 20 cm:s more drawing space if the bow would be held vertically.

Good:

The actress' archery form is not so bad, only the four finger string grip (which is a minor mistake), and the lower elbow position in one scene are her errors. For the others are moviemakers to blame. Also which is good, is the use of spare quivers on chariots. There were regularly many quivers on a chariot carrying archers around a battlefield, since otherwise they would've ran out of arrows pretty quickly. Although Greeks didn't use chariot archers (in Homeric times they used chariots to bring noble fighters to the battlefield, and carry them out when they were tired of battling), but this is a fantasy/legendary movie, so they can have it.