Raptor arms

Two pieces of 1mm aluminum wire bent at a few places.
Somehow I'll... make some wings... out of youuu!

Made a reference picture in the size the wings will be on the figure, traced the outline on masking tape attached to the wires (half of which is shown here, the tape's not wide enough to make it all out of one piece), and cut it into shape.

Rolled polymer clay into a thin sheet (with the side of a round glass jar again), covered the masking tape with it on both sides, and like with the tailfan, shaped it around with mostly a sewing pin, and a bit of the silicon brush and craft blade.

Detailing the flight feathers on both sides of the wing before baking was a little challenging, but I noticed I can avoid messing up the details on one side pretty well while working on the other side even with the wing rested on my hand, by having a piece of baking paper under the wing.

Skye is holding her hands mostly palms-inwards in the pose I want for the figure, but given her weird JP wrists, her wings are a bit messy with the position of the feathers, such as both wings having the primaries (flight feathers on the finger) fold on top of the secondaries (flight feathers on the forearm) on the outer side of the wing when it should be the other way around. I also attached to the middle of the wing a few feathers from the same batch of loose feathers made separately that I used one from for the fluff on her lower back. These ones are a bit raggedy flight feathers, worn from the primaries and secondaries switching back and forth over each other like they wouldn't on more functional wings. Skye's starting to be due for a moult, it seems.

After baking the wings once, I added coverts, some foil to fill out the arm, and clay to cover the foil. Baked again, and added coverts to the other side. The two wings are in slightly different positions, with the left one more bent at the wrist.

I had some trouble with the masking tape armature, and learned to cover up masking tape more carefully when using it inside a polymer clay sculpture. First the tape on the finger that I'd left exposed (not wanting to add too much clay bulk there) split open during baking, then I noticed I hadn't covered it well enough at some of the flight feathers' tips, either, and there were spots where it was showing through enough for the glue on the tape to be sticky to the touch. After a few touch-ups and re-bakes...

Time to add hands. I rolled some foil into little sticks and attached them with a bit of clay. After baking that, I shaped the first and third finger of the hand around those sticks and added more clay to the second finger.

Like so. I baked the wing again at this point so I wouldn't smush the fingers when adding more feather details around them. The hands were a bit time-consuming to sculpt, so I only did one at a time.

Tools are mostly the same I've mostly been using so far. I'm really impressed with how versatile of a sculpting tool a regular sewing pin is turning out to be! A few of the small detail lines I drew with another impromptu sculpting tool, though: a small loop of 0.3mm nylon string. It varied with the angle I had to hold the tool in to draw the line (depending on where in the wing it was) which one worked best, the resulting lines don't really look much different (the ones drawn with the string are a bit thicker, the ones drawn with the pin a bit sharper). I also used a darning needle again, to poke holes in the tips of the fingers for claws. I'll make them out of epoxy putty later, since it's harder than polymer clay when cured.

Then I added feathers on the arm of the wing that already had a hand on it, and made the other hand (+ some feathers on the back of the hand, but arm still mostly without feather details). I made these feathers using the same methods I've used on the feathers on the torso and legs.

After that bake, added feathers to the other arm, too (and a few more to the one I'd already added them to), and... I think these should be ready to attach to the body now!

This is just the hand and forearm of each limb, upper arms are getting sculpted over the wires I'll attach them with. Unless I find something else works better, I guess - still mostly making this up as I go along.