Making Bow Animations

As of this writing, a canonical example for the correct way to animate a bow animation, is the human bowman. I suggest you imitate by example, but there are a few subtle points I should note:

• the extreme cant (aka tilt) of the bow is intentional. It allows the bow attack to look equally good to both the SE/SW, and the south. Having the bow directly vertical makes it really obvious which direction the unit is drawn to be shooting in, and because of that, it looks bad when the animation is used for something contradictory to that. The trick to the tilt is precisely that it's vague, and it makes it unclear exactly which direction the unit is aiming at.

• bows in wesnoth don't show any animation of the archer drawing an arrow, or in fact have the arrow in-hand whilst drawing the bow. It's not worth the effort, and we won't accept submissions to 'correct' this.

• Look very closely at how the bow moves up and down in the frames. Notice that in the final 3 frames of the bow animation, the bow becomes a diagonal line, and also notice how the bow and drawing arm separate further in the later frames. Make a point of very closely imitating the specific patterns of movement for both arms, relative to each other, and relative to their positions in the previous frame. It really makes a difference, even on a precision level of individual pixels.

See Also

• Basic Animation Tutorial
• Art Tutorials
• Create Art