I only did a very short animation test. I had already noticed that I wouldn't be able to fold this wing in the way I initially planned and had researched it should fold up. I did actually do a really quick animation in between moving house where I animated without any framegrabber software but I can not share it right now as I have some problems with my editing software. It wasn't very good anyway, but I will post it here still when I can. Below is a little flapping motion test. I also need to still research and analyze the motion better for the next test, but also I need some time to get used to the armature. Some findings during animating:
* I din't have the shoulder joint attached yet to this wing. This is of course affecting how I can animate it, as normally a lot of movement would come from the shoulder joint, so in that way my animation already can not be fully correct anyway, which is a shame for testing the wing properly, unfortunately.
* The feathers at the 'hand' part of the wing should already be pointed more sideways in their natural position. Now some of them are not able to move as far as they should when spreading the wing out.
* The hand part can't fold under the lower arm as it should. It will need another joint to be able to do this.
* The metal bars for feathers should probably actually be longer at the upper arm and shorter at the lower arm (being the more solid part of the feather, at the end of the wing - even though they are also longer - they will need to be more flexible). I may have to look again at more wings in movement to check how far certain parts of the wing can and do bend.
* I will have to think more about a fanning mechanism for the feathers, where they can layer on top of each other and also follow each other when moving one.
After testing the wing I was really convinced that I wanted to re-design the wing. So I set down to go back to sketching, drawing and prototyping stage again. The pictures below show first the development trying to sketch out different ideas and putting them together, then the second picture is a quick prototype using wood and brass rods testing the main concept without clamping plates.
I remembered the idea with using rods instead of the metal strips I had been using from a discussion way back with Arril. He suggested that and even possibly using wood as a simpler method for the feather mechanism. I was doubting about that idea then as I was not worried that I would not be able to control the tension of the feathers and that they would move to easily just by touching, also when I don't want them to during animating. But this time I realized that this method would have another benefit: when using the rods, this would mean they would not get into each others way when pivoting and therefore also they would be able to overlap more like feathers in a real wing do. So, I quickly tested the concept as Arril had mentioned it with wood and brass rods and it moved nicely and smooth indeed, the wood provided some natural friction as well so they weren't fitting in too loosely, but still I wasn't convinced about not being able to adjust the tension and make them tighter when necessary. So I transferred my idea of a clamping mechanism as used for the first wing to this new idea. I was still considering first if I could be using wood, but then rejected this idea as I thought it would be mostly complicating things when having to combine materials. I would still need to use metal for the ball and socket joints anyway. Also, using wood would mean I would need probably thicker parts for it to be strong enough, and even though lighter then metal, metal would still allow me to work with thinner/smaller parts. So I decided to use metal, and make a clamping mechanism for the rods, which would have to be on the sides of the rod as they would come from the top. I also re-used the idea of a leather strip, which would have two purposes now: to avoid damaging the rods, but also again to even out the friction where I would not succeed in exact precision for the positioning of the rods.
Developing new ideas.
Below is the 'final' scale drawing of the new design for the wing.
New design for the wing.
It took me some frustration and more research into bird wings again before coming to a possible solution. Bird wings are still such complicated things! I'm still not sure if I fully understand their anatomy and how they work. I decided to order a book on bird anatomy as the sources I could find on bird anatomy and especially wing anatomy were quite limited. I should have a copy of the 'Manual of Ornithology - Avian Structure & Function' (N.S. Proctor & P.J. Lynch) by the end of this week...
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