【Weapon Design】Become a Weaponsmith ～Bow Edition～

I love fantasy settings.

Weapons throwing off sparks, magic spells flying back and forth.

Mysterious potions reviving lives.

From fights between humans to friendships across races and species.

I truly love the world of fantasy that we will never be able to experience.

 

Among the weapons that have extremely cool effects during attack scenes, I feel like bows tend to stand out very well under the fantasy setting.

Not only are they given attributes but they are allowed for a huge upgrade on power and effectiveness, like homing and infinite arrows etc. !

If the arrows are magical themselves, it also tends to be that you can make multiple shots per one arrow.

 

This tutorial will be a complete guide for bows, trying to get the best out of a superb weapon !

I’m aiming to turn this article into a reference material to suggest various bow types to all the readers.

I hope this helps you with your future weapon design !

▼Become a Weaponsmith　Season 1

【For Beginners】Become a Weaponsmith – Casting & Minting ～【Weapon Design】

【For Beginners & Intermediates】Become a Weaponsmith ~Equipment Edition~【Weapon Design】

 

Bow Types

There are many types of bows.

From regular bows (shortbow, longbow) and Yumi, the Japanese bows with asymmetrical curves, to crossbows, there are many types that fall under the category of bows.

By determining the type of a bow you want to draw beforehand, you will be able to draw without hesitation when you start the illustration process.

In particular, the size becomes important here; it sometimes ends up looking off or feeling a little out of place when you combine the bow with other weapons or characters…

It will be very challenging and time consuming to fix this weirdness later so you want to avoid that as much as possible !

 

Casting

If you have the overall image figured out, start drawing the decorative parts and other details.

The easiest way to start would be to have chosen a theme for the weapon.

A typical one would be its attribute !

You can also design based on a motif where easily ones would be animals like wolves or birds, and flowers.

It becomes extra helpful if you decide on one more theme like “gorgeous” or “well-used” !

(Sometimes adding an extra theme might make designing even more difficult, sorry !)

Another unique element of the bow is, of course, the arrows.

You can make them into a set but I also think you can allow the setting to use different types of arrows for each battle etc. too !

In our world, the bows used for archery have an accessory called the stabilizer.

There are also compound bows where the bowstrings are set on pulleys.

I’m sure they are logically more powerful since they have been designed for better shot accuracy.

It would be fun to create a design imitating those as well !

 

Equipping

Once you are done creating the bow, let’s equip the weapon.

Since you made a weapon, you want someone to use it !

 

The style of equipment changes for when they are on and off battles.

I don’t think I need to explain this but by “on battle” I mean when the weapon is held in hand.

The posture not only depicts the characterization but it also tells us their battling style.

If you want to draw a dynamic combat scene with impact, the posture might even be more important than the weapon design.

The “off battle” style depends on how the character stores or walks around with the weapon.

It looks more natural if the character carries the bow on their back or holds it at their waist.

It can often be left out in game designs too so you can change the design to fit your purpose.

Now the weapon design is complete !

It really depends on you whether you want to equip the weapons but I introduced them since I have a feeling that most readers would want to imagine them with a character.

 

A representative of long distance weapons in the fantasy world: the bow.

As more works are brought to modern settings, it tends to be replaced with a gun but I feel that the beauty in the posture of pulling the bow never gets old.

Make use of the fantasy setting as much as possible and design an attractive bow !

 

Lastly, I refined one of the designs I liked, so I will include the image below.

Thank you for reading this tutorial !

（Text・Illustration／時計）

Twitter @Clock1231