Bad Bicycle Drawings

A collection of bicycles that just don’t work that way IRL

[badbikedrawings]

Mostly just the missing chain stay. Altho the front wheel geometry is off, too; the fork is too straight. Also, brakes, lights &c. would hav been nice. From Assigned Male

[jimhenson-themuppetmaster]

Kermit the Frog Bicycle Photos

[badbikedrawings]

left chain

Well, i do think the chain on normal bikes should be on the road side – left for most of the world – but it isn’t. For the yellow bike the model maker just messed it up.

[badbikedrawings]

That’s all, folks. At least for now.

I posted all the pictures i could find from the stuff i’v read.

From now on, i will post them as i find them. That will be much, much slower.

The picture is from Umi no Misaki. It’s set on a remote iland. We know there is at least one bike on the iland, but this is all we get to see of it. I feel cheated. I want bad bike drawings in my manga.

[badbikedrawings]

One of Toshio Saeki’s less nightmarish pictures. I still cut out the “saddl”, it’s been called “erotic horror art”. But we are here for the bike.

Missing top tube. The too thin main tube would make this bike wobble terribly and tear itself apart in no time.

The rear spokes are uneven, some of them should be going to the other side of the rear hub.

It might have a very slight negative trail, but it’s hard to measure exactly. Even if that’s the case, it’s not bad enough for this.

[badbikedrawings]

Oh, there are good bike drawings in manga, too.

For example in Bakuman. Ashirogi are going around on their bikes all the time, and they are drawn fine.

In Bamboo blade, the bikes look good, too.

It’s probably a combination of experience, attention to detail and usage of refenrences.

[badbikedrawings]

Dykes to Watch Out For 288

No chain stay

The OK proportion of the bikes in DTWOF suggests they are done after references, but her she just forgot to draw one bit.

[badbikedrawings]

Comic by American Holly 🌿

So not all examples are from manga.

This one is, … oh, dear

No hed tube. The handlebar is stuck to a prolongd down tube, the fork stuck to that at a roughly 90° angle.

No chain stay

The saddl stay is oddly long, going up to the saddl, leaving no place for a saddl post

[badbikedrawings]

Unknown artist, c. 1960s to 1970s.

I did know that lots of countries claim their folks invented flight, the car or the telefone, but apparently there were similar shenanigans about bicycles, and this is the Italian entry in this regards. Looks very much like a 20th century fake, not a sketch by Leonardo or one of his students.

Oh, and for Germany:

The Wright brothers did study Lilienthal’s work on unpowered, controlled flight.

There were other powered road vehicles, but the Benz patent motor car was the first one more convenient than horse and carriage. You could just grab the kids, take the car and visit your mother some 100 km away.

I only learned recently that the Reis telefone didn’t work that well. I’ll have to let the Americans have that one.

Then again, this not-Leonardo work was apparently faked to claim priority over Drais’s running machine or dandy horse

[badbikedrawings]

Rewrite Side B

I think this is supposed to be the same bike from the last entry, but it’s got a different frame geometry, and that one is bad.

the single main tube, joind down and top tube, is too thin. There are lots of modern bikes with a single tube, but those are thicker, especially where they join the hed tube. This one would break in two in no time.

Also, the front mudgard stay has fallen off the mudgard, and that would be scraping on the tire.

[badbikedrawings]

Rewrite Side B

I think the first one is new:

No bottom bracket. The crank axl is floating in mid air

The left crank arm is stuck to the bottom of the chain gard. What?

No saddl stay

And another new one in the second image

Hubs arn’t at the centers of the wheels.

This one does have a bottom bracket, but its stuck oddly above the down tube/chain stays

[badbikedrawings]

そらのおとしもの (Sora no Otoshimono, Heaven’s Lost Property)

One more line and this would hav been a nice bike drawing. So we hav a wobbbly bike

No saddl stay

[badbikedrawings]

ハヤテのごとく! (Hayate no Gotoku!, Hayate, The Combat Butler)

Huh‽

I really thought this was another case of a bike with negativ trail.

Sometimes it is hard to gage the hed tube angle, and this bike has a normal amount of rake after all.

Turns out this is a good bike drawing. Even the saddl is high enough up, not close to the frame with this pro knee pain/anti saddl post thing common in Japan.

[badbikedrawings]

よつばと! (Yotsuba&!)

Another children’s bike. About an order of magnitude better than the opening entry. Still:

The chain stay is missing

Also, i think the main tube for children’s bikes tend to be thicker.

[badbikedrawings]

Ranma ½ once more.

(Mirrord back from my mirrord US edition)

These two ar so similar that i first mistook them as being done after the same reference. Anyway, they ar both bad.

That is some Escher chain & chain gard, in both of them

The chain ring is, incorrectly, on left of the bottom bracket,

then the chain passes to the right of the tire.

It goes on to a sprocket on the left side of the rear hub.

The chain gard goes through the spokes plane, too. It should be outside the right seat stay, go around it, or end before it.

But that they are different is a bit odd. Does Shampoo (is that her name in all translation?) get herself new bike every few weeks? The mudgards, handlebar and details like that are quite different.

Where they ar different, there ar bad bits, too.

The first:

The fork is oddly wide at the top.

The bottom bracket is too far forward, too. not just on the wrong side.

The right pedal is in the wrong position. It should be 180° from the left, forward and below horizontal.

There is no chain stay

And the second:

Where is the top tube?

And the down tube?

Or anything at all connecting the front and rear sections of this bisect-ycle.

I once saw a clown riding a unicycle with another bicycle-style wheel and handlebar in his hands, pretending the two parts where a bike. Something like this is happening here, only that the bottom bracket should have dropped to the ground long ago.

[badbikedrawings]

涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱 (Suzumiya Haruhi No Yūutsu, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya)

Mainly this:

Chain on the left

Also, the hilights on the rear mudgard show that the left saddl stay is missing

[badbikedrawings]

未満れんあい (Mikan Renai/Insufficient Affections)

Chain on the left

Negativ trail. The front fork is kinky. Um, er. I mean, the steering tube is almost vertical, which makes it quite hard to get the necessary trail. And then the fork rake gives you a large negativ trail. No wonder they had problems transporting stuff with this contraption earlier.

The second image shows you how it’s done. the line through the hed tube must tuch the ground ahed of the point where the wheel tuches the ground by a little. I won’t measure this for every bike i see in a manga and only mention really bad cases like this one.

[badbikedrawings]

Die Sache mit Sorge again.

left chain

and so we get a good look at that, no chain stays in the way

The hed tube is quite short, but i am not 100% sure there were no bikes like that around.