A Question of Shields........

[macsen rufus]

Take a peek at the "unit animations" thread in the Repository (IIRC) which has a great explanation, however, I believe the linked illustrations have "gone west". I tend to go the Frankenstein route as well

Edit: useful tip - in custom battle mode you can make changes "on the fly" - ie Alt-Tab out of MTW, edit your item coordinates, Alt-Tab back into the battle and see what's changed.

Another edit: also try defining your shield rectangle with more space around it (ie as a new shield in shields.txt) and you can probably correct some of the distortions.