Making Bow Animations
From The Battle for Wesnoth Wiki
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.
- 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.