As a significant percentage of my animation will involve one or both of my characters in flight, I felt it was important to study the proper anatomical movement of wings. Eadweard Muybridge's highly informative photographic sequences luckily included a vulture in flight, which shows the clear stages in the movement of larger wings.
Also, while I have some idea of the size of bird wings in comparison with their bodies, I was unsure how large Icarus' wings should be. While in depictions of Cupid and some of the classical painting of Icarus I researched, the wings are quite small, many further winged figures in popular culture have more powerful looking wings, which I felt would be better suited to the character.
Those I chose to focus on were the Angel of Death from Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Black Swan's transformative dance sequence and the Icarus images used in Brazil, also by Gilliam. In each of these films the wings are large, like those of a bird of prey, and in the latter two act as an extension of the characters' arms. As Icarus' wings are artificial rather than organic, it seems logical to me that the wings would be attached to and controlled by the arms rather than moving independently.
Which brings me to how the wings should move. As they are effectively mechanical, I didn't want the movement of the wings to be completely smooth and fluid, but rather slightly jolted and unnatural. What sprang to mid was the bat gremlin from Gremlins 2, whose slower than natural movement allows the beating wings to be better appreciated. Hopefully, by creating Icarus' wings as articulated cut out models I will be able to achieve a similar motion.
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