What a cute dragon
I spent a while a few years back watching dragons flying around (ok, they were seagulls and ravens… still…) and I’d like to share my observations. Dragons either flap their wings or glide, they don’t combine the two motions. There’s no flap, glide, flap, glide, kind of motion. Either the dragon is climbing, power diving or gaining speed, in which case it’s flap flap flap flap… or the dragon glides on updrafts. Dragons tend to keep their necks straight when flapping, and look around when gliding.
Gliding dragons generally glide downward, unless they are in an updraft, in which case they glide upward. When in an updraft, dragons generally glide in a circle, to stay above the ‘hot spot’ and continue to take advantage of the updraft. So if you see a dragon gliding in a circle, it is usually rising, gliding in a straight line, falling.
When the dragon flaps its wings, there is a power stroke (downward) and a recovery stroke (wings return to top position). On the power stroke the dragon’s torso rises slightly, and speeds up. Dragons with longer necks tend to keep their heads level, so their head bobs up and down in relation to their torso (it’s really the torso going up and down), but stays level in a global sense. On the recovery stroke, of course, the torso drops a bit. Also, on the power stroke, the dragon will speed up slightly, and will slow down a bit on the recovery stroke.
Now, if the dragon is trying to gain altitude, each little rise will be more than each little drop, but the increase and decrease in speed will tend to balance out, so the dragon will go higher but not faster overall. The reverse is true when the dragon is gaining speed: rise and fall about equal, but a bit more speed gained on the power stroke than is lost on the recovery stroke.
When dragons do power dives, though, all bets are off. They can drop under power straight as an arrow. At the bottom of the dive, they don’t lose any speed, they just change direction so they are flying parallel to the ground instead of toward it. And generally snatch up whatever prey attracted their attention in the first place. Landings are quite different. Dragons glide into landing, spilling air and dropping faster than the usual for a glide, until they are almost down, then they do this sort of back stroke with their wings, almost as if they are taking off backwards, which kills their forward speed, and if they are really good, they wind up with zero speed when they get to zero elevation. Most aren’t that good, and arrive at zero speed when they are a few feet above the ground, and leave their wings spread to ‘parachute’ to the ground, sometimes giving a little bit of a power stroke just as they touch the ground.
Anyway, when you get around to animating your cute little critter, I hope this will help you out.