Building week 5 - a short week...

This week for building went really quick. I was a bit distracted from the work as I had to move out my house by Wednesday morning and still had not found a place to live on Monday. So I took Monday off for finding a place and left a bit earlier on Tuesday to move all my stuff that night.
Tuesday I mainly cleaned up the armature further, cutting off the screws shorter and then started with the parts for the middle body part (chest, hips, etc. access points for shoulders, neck, legs, tail). After briefly talking to Arril on friday about the wing finished so far and testing and reviewing it myself (no proper animation test yet, as I had been occupied with finding a house) I knew that I was actually not satisfied enough with this wing. It still has a lot of issues and can not do all the movements I initially intended for it to do. I felt I needed to let it rest for a bit and have another look at it over Easter and then decide whether I could improve the existing design or would want to make an entire new design.

 So the two days that were left (Friday was bank holiday) I worked on the middle body parts. I thought it would be a good idea after the new experience so far building the wing and noticing problems after building, to review the scale drawing once more and see if I could spot any more problems beforehand this time. Indeed, I did find another problem. Looking at my design for the hip joints I saw that the angle wouldn't be right. I had designed the hip block to be straight with the legs sticking out at the sides. This would mean that when in flying position the legs can point down easily as well, but moving back and forward would be limited using this positioning. If I would turn the joint a quarter I would get better back and forward movement, but the legs wouldn't be able to point down entirely.*

So I quickly sketched a new idea, which was to use a single bar of metal that is bent at both sides, and have single ball joints attached from here, so they can be positioned in a more ideal angle to allow for the movement they need to be able to make. If the drawing makes it any clearer...

quick sketch

The work of this week + the wing

*edit: Now later I'm noticing that I overlooked a much simpler solution for this. As I could just have the rod that is sticking out as upper leg bone to be bent in an angle at the top, in which way it can still benefit from the full turning around that is possible with the ball joint without the joint plates getting in the way...