#wing membrane

[rayetherna]

Reference commission for Drakken ^^  

[f-nodragonart]

Can massive wings make up for lack of membrane?

nope, not at all. the problem isn’t the fact that the surface area of the wings wouldn’t be enough to hold the dragon, cus’ it would, but it would be a problem of how the body would orient itself in the air w/ such membrane-lacking wings, and how the the body’s weight would be distributed

picture a dragon w/ extreme lack of membrane (such as the membrane attaching at the armpit). now picture this dragon up in the air, wings flapping to keep them aloft. w/o any membrane running down the body, the body would just hang limply down, below the dragon

problem 1) this doesn’t make for a proper flight position at all. since flight requires adjustments to make for the least amount of air resistance, if the body was just hanging down, this would create just abt the MOST air resistance possible

problem 2) the dragon would have p uncomfortable, if not outright EXCRUCIATINGLY PAINFUL flight. membrane running down the full body allows the weight of the body to be spread out across the membrane, so no one point on the wing/membrane is holding too much weight for it to handle. if the membrane attached at the armpit, the FULL weight of the body would be localized to JUST the wing arm shoulders. unless the wing arm shoulders had some RIDICULOUSLY strong muscular/skeletal connections to the body, the flight would be quite uncomfortable and awkward

problem 3) evolutionarily, it’s just too complicated. nature generally goes the easiest route it can to reach its end goal. thus, if evolution were trying to find a way for a set of wings to hold up a dragon, they wouldn’t waste energy extending the arm/fingers of the wings when the membrane could just be extended down the body, bypassing the need to deal w/ the arm muscles and bones, which are much more complicated than the membrane

problem 4) if the wings were to lengthen to the point of realistically lifting a dragon w/o body-based membrane, the wings would have to be HUGE. much bigger than is practical for the dragon to carry around, whether they’d be too heavy overall, or too long/lanky and awkward or difficult to control

our flight tag goes into this topic more, in some of the older posts

tho, of course, all wings are different, and there are certainly wings that sacrifice width for wing length, in order to fit a specific flight pattern. the second half of this post and the entirety of this post get into wing shape, loading, aspect ratio, etc etc.

-Mod Spiral

[pythosart]

Here's a crappy little thing I threw together during class.

This is something that has been bothering me for a while. Hopefully this will be helpful to someone.

Basically, light passing through a wing membrane will be diffused and desaturated. Wing membrane is translucent, not transparent. Think of it as looking through wax paper. You can see a vague silhouette but the edges are blurred, and they get lighter and more blurred the further away the object is from the paper.