Bird Feathers

This is Pip, a green cheek conure. He molts feathers twice a year, so I get more experience with seeing healthy feathers.

Paper Feathers

Two different styles of paper feathers, made from metallic silver origami paper.

This metallic material does really interesting things with light, so I expect it would be really magical with colored lights.

The folded feathers have a fascinating texture to them, but are quite bulky in size. I had to tape them down to keep them pointing forward. And, I don’t think they’d be successful they’d be modeling overlapping feathers.

But, the geometric qualities does echo low-poly 3D, which could lean more into the artificial reality I want to build for Iridescent Heart. I could consider doing more abstracted wings (using very large paper), like Naoko Takeuchi’s more simplified wing design for Eternal Sailor Moon.

Iridescent Plastic

Next, trial was done using iridescent plastic. This stuff is designed for gift wrapping while being impossible to cut (it seems to prefer ripping). As it kept curling over on itself, I quickly hot glued some fishing wire onto it as a shaft.

The colors on it are interesting, with a noticeable difference with light and dark backgrounds.

The glare on it is pretty difficult to photograph with. I’d originally gotten it a few years ago to make a crystalline effect, but it’s actually really difficult to see through.

Iridescent Fabric

You’ll probably recognize this fabric from my jellyfish.

Similar to the plastic, there’s a hue shift dependent on whether it’s against a light or dark background.

They mostly held their shape together, with a small bit of glue to form the shaft. They also had the closest overlay to a real bird’s feather, with them sort of blending together into a mass.

The color is especially enchanting: a popular vaporwave color scheme is a mix of minty green and pink (based on the AriZona Tea green tea packaging). Having Cupid & Venus pink-coded with Psyche as green could make for nice unifying color scheme.

Up Next

I think the more promising results are the folded/origami paper and the iridescent fabric. With the paper, I want to get a larger piece to work with and try folding more of a large wing than individual feathers.

I’m curious now how the fabric would react to ironing to form pleats. Could I get a similar low-poly effect as the paper?

I’m also wondering if I should be making two costumes per character. Would having two styles of wings make the separation between virtual and true realities more pronounced? Does that feel more like one is going on an otherworldly adventure?