Rito Redesign

I love the Legend of Zelda series, but the design of the Rito in Breath of the Wild uses one of biggest pet peeves: feathers that work like fingers.

Oh boy do I hate feather fingers. It makes no sense, and then even worse these Rito still use their wings like hands while they are flying which is just so impractical. They should have stuck with their concept art of a Rito using their feet to shoot arrows while flying, that makes much more sense.

And there are a few other things that bother me about the design of course. The wing shape lacks secondary flight feathers, their wings seem to move like paddles, they have a grand total of three tail feathers, and their waists are weirdly skinny.

So I fixed it. First by altering the official concept art of a Rito and then by just drawing some Rito in my own style.

(Description: the Nintendo official concept art if a generic Rito. They are an anthropomorphic bird person with brown and white feathers, with their wings being used like arms with feather hands. Below this is the same artwork but with my alterations added. They have more flight feathers, their torso is thicker, and I have added two claw fingers to the wing.)

As I have mentioned previously, we do actually have a real bird that has claws on its wing. The hoatzin! Also called the stink bird. The claws fall off when they reachadulthood, but they are still a great reference for adding claws to wings in a natural way. And adding claws to the wing is the best way to have your fictional bird people use their wings as hands. Or you can just go slightly more bird-like and make then use their feet as hands whether they are flying or not.

(Description: three Rito drawn and flatly colored in my style. One is a profile portrait of a Rito with reddish brown feathers and long soft crest feathers pulled into a sort of ponytail. She is wearing some jewelery. There is another white feathered Rito shown flying, looking very much like a slightly elongated bird with clothes on and claws poking out of their wing feathers. Abd a third Rito is brown and cream colored with striped wings, in a similar pose to the official artwork above: standing and gesturing with one wing. The other wing is folded up by their shoulder.)

Not much difference besides just the style haha, but I did give them even fuller wings, made the wings move like real wings instead of arms, and made the neck more curved like a short swan neck.

I did also give them round pupils instead of slit pupils because the only species of bird that I'm aware of with slit pupils is the black skimmer. So even though slit pupils might look more intense, it doesn't make much sense.

And I kept the long hair-like feathers at their heads because many birds have weird display feathers! It's a really fun thing to play with when designing bird people.

So that's my simple redesign of the Rito. No more pesky feather fingers.