feather approaches

Even though I will be spending much time on the armature first, I felt it was necessary to gather some thoughts about how to construct the feathers for the birds, especially for the wings, as their attachment will be a direct part of the armature, and the feathers themselves will need some sort of wire at least at the tips to be able to move there. I had a little play with different things I had laying around and trying to think what may work. If I want to be able to manipulate the feathers, real feathers are no option. I have been considering if it really would be possibly to get some neat -non-fluffy- feathers and incorporate some wire in it somehow, but it seems like it will only complicate things more... finding the right sizes, fiddling around with wire & glue or what not... No, I will have to think of some stylized approach. The question is then, how stylized do I want to go? Definitely not fowl play bird style. Can I use some paper or card? Or fabric? Or even a really thin cast of some material of a real or sculpted feather shape?

I was wondering if something with really thin hard foam would work, or something like the foam sheets used for the fowl play birds, but thinner, and then this foam could be cut and painted for more character. I did a little test with the foam sheet I still had, and then tried to slice a really thin slice of foam from the red yoga blog I used for the fowl play birds bodies (the top and bottom solid parts). It is difficult to cut that neat though. I still had some very thin aluminium sheet (but a lot thicker then foil...) which I used now to cut little strips for in the middle of the feather, to see if it would work keeping the whole thing thinner, I attached it to the outside and dipped some coloured latex on top to hide it. The rest of the foam feather was shaped and painted. I do like the look of the feather, but I'm not fully convinced yet. I'd like to try some other approaches still.

I also had some white synthetic 'hair' picked up from the scrap store some time ago and noticed that I could lay it out quite neatly and then glue it together with spraymount, to make a sheet of actual lined 'hairs' as in real feathers. It looks nice, but it's not easy getting it nice and it seems not very strong...