Graduate: Stop Motion Animation and Puppet Making Degree

The first week project for second year of my Stop Motion Animation and Puppet Making degree is looking into portmanteau words. Making up our own words of two different words put together.
Mine were:
DRALU – dragon with the flu
SEUNK – seal punk
ELEIRD – a cross between an elephant and a bird or and flying elephant

And it was voted on that my character to make from 15seconds of animation was that of the Eleird..
As research for this design I of course looked into the origional creatures and drew some out before looking into how birds fly, sketching out some quick studies of the movement of flying wings. I coloured over the important needed feathers in yellow so for later if too complex with other smaller feathers I can keep to the simpler look.