Quetzalcoatl

I started off by just drawing birds, real and cartoon. To get a feel of how other people seem to be designing birds. And i find i learn why people do things by copying them to start with. Like i like the wings doing gestures like the bottom left bird on the second page.

I then researched the Quetzal bird as you have seen in the previous post. I started doing some drawings of this to get a feel of the bird and see which bits I would like to include in the design. I found the pattern of the feathers and the colours and the tail all very beautiful and would like to do my best to keep those in the design.

Next I started mixing the snake in and seeing what worked. I don't like the top left design as it reminds me of the first Jurassic park and that was a dinosaur not a bird snake. Im also not so keen on the opposite page. It seems like the wings are just stuck onto a snake and it just all looks rather odd. The bottom left looks quite nice but maybe needs to be more obvious that they're wings?

Then I looked at king cobras and i thought it would be brilliant because of the wide regal neck I thought this would be great to put feathers on as it looks quite like wings. When a cobra gets angry it flares this part on its neck and i thought wouldn't it be great if he stuck his wings out when this happened?! And then puts the wings back like a bird does when its done flying. 

I am quite liking how this is looking so far and i think i may try and draw and refine this on photoshop and get some nice colours in there. Then ask people what they think and make sure the silhouette works. I think it will definitely be very different to the bat so i think it may work together.