New animation test

Still the old wing design, but with the wire extensions and possible solution for the fanning mechanism. In the mean time working on building the new wing design for the wing at the other side...

I had some doubts about the elastic band, but so far it works quite nice. Indeed it is a bit springy, but for the subtle movements needed in this part of the wing it works ok. I'm not sure though how it will work out in the hand part of the wing. Will have to just try it once I've got the new design for that finished for at least one wing. The wire works quite nice. I was thinking that the slightly thicker and therefore slightly tougher to animate wire would be nicer to work with, but actually I was more pleased with the thinner ones. Because it needs to be such subtle movement, it is easier to achieve this with the more flexible wire. But then, I don't want to move everything around when just slightly touching it... I will just have to play a bit around with different combinations I think to find what works best... Also it will take some more tests to find out what would be a good tension on the feather rods, so I don't accidentally knock them sideways, but still they are easy enough to move when pulling a feather. At the secondary feathers part where I already added the sewing elastic, it was hard to find a good balance where the rods were tightened enough to have some resistance against the elastic, but still loose enough to follow each other when pulling one.

During this test I also clearly noticed how my one ball joints are currently not working right and can not be tightened properly. The shoulder joint can in some positions just simply not carry all of the weight of the wing therefore, and so sometimes drops down, or makes other unwanted moves. That should all be resolved with the new design, hopefully...

Yep, now things are starting to move there is lots more to think about again and more problems to solve, as always...