Eventually got the hang of the Rigify-Pitchipoy rig that ships with Blender.  I'll use this one instead of mine XD

(I made mine with the intention to use it for animating but it was mostly to learn how to rig in Blender because I like having an idea of how to do everything, I am however not a rigger)

Please excuse the odd deformations, it's a low poly model and I didn't fix up the (pretty good) autoskinning as the intention was to test the rig. These folded arms are much better than my last folded arms and much easier!

Update: now with animation!

How I feel about a number of things at the moment, including finally working out how to usea couple of the controllers that were puzzling me..

Part of the rig test I'm currently doing.  Now that I've worked out how it works (setup is a bit of a chore especially the umpteenth time) Rigify-Pitchipoy is awesome XD I have zero regrets fighting with the rig I had before as I did want to learn how to rig (and now know how to do a basic one) but can't say I'm good at it.  Will definitely be using this one for characters.  Can really get stuck into characters and sets now I think as the rig was the last major blocker.

Okay so I have no excuse for sets really, I just wanted to get the rig sorted first.

The good thing about drawing is that you can blithely say that your character has a 20m wingspan and still draw them folded up neatly against their backs in the pose everyone expects, which is something similar to my short-armed redo which had a roughly 5m wingspan:

I can't remember how I came about my original calculations but I worked out that a 1.8m tall (because that's how tall my base model is, no other real reason) Avian should have a 10-12m wingspan.  Because I didn't want to make the wing arms too big (because heavy plus looked stupid past a certain point) I managed to end up with 3m long primaries.

For comparative purposes one with a 7m wingspan (made the wing arms longer but used the feathers I'd done originally, didn't zoom in for size comparison):

Error riddled but I'm calling it done so I can move along with other things.  Like characters and sets and maybe more paintovers.  Least my arm rig works which was the purpose of the exercise!

Amazing what turning on the other two lights can do.  Base is a bit less annoyed now that we've nearly finished a rig test (FINALLY).

This pose kind of just happened shortly after I animated a "yeah...and...?" type shrug, and it reminded me of all the similar types of poses I've seen in movies and various pieces of art around the place, usually where the hero has been beaten to a pulp and is staggering off somewhere or stubbornly staggers back to their feet to eventually kick arse and chew bubble gum.

In other news, the arm rigs seem to work now.

Base pretending it's not recovering from a stumble.

 I stuffed up the initial walk timing and with the amount of keying I'd done it was easier to just remove them and try again.  It's getting there.

Screencap of the latest rig test.  Base has had enough :)

How I felt after falling over problem after problem as Sprat and I bugsquished another site, also representing yet another complete failure at getting to bed before midnight.

Also, folded arms are hard.