We all know that Avians have Podotheca on their feet, but I have seen their arms/hands portrayed as both feathered, and taloned. Usually I settle on feathered, but it does draw up some questions. For instance: Some of Starbound's official art shows Avians as having taloned hands, whereas their sprites do not. (of course, some of their art shows them with feathered hands, naked, human-esque arms, etc. GG Chucklefish.) I am simply curious as to what the consensus is in the community. Which do you think? Clawed/Taloned hands or feathered hands?
I'm pretty sure in every concept art, and specially the in-game art portrays them with feathered hands. Not only does the sprite show them with feathered hands, it's in the Avian intro too;
Taloned hands are muh head canon. I don't really understand how feathered hands would work. Wouldn't that be extremely uncomfortable? Especially how they show that their palms are also covered with feathers? But then the thing that FFPLEASE linked. There is also about how many toes do they have. Two (as it is shown ingame) or three (as it is shown on some of the early art). But honestly, I think it is best not to make any bold claims about a race until the game is finished. Since all these confusions that Chucklefish themselves create only makes me think that they haven't decided themselves.
Or that they don't care. Which likely means that it won't be solved any time soon. I see your point, on feathered hands being an issue. I always imagined its why most Avians traditionally wore very little (a lot of cloth rubbing on your feathers is just asking to static shock everything.) Not exactly the most comfortable thing to have.
Inconsistencies? In starbound? NEVER! Anyway, I thought about this for a while, and concluded that feathered hands make the most sense. As for feathered hands being uncomfortable/impractical, they could easily be covered in down feathers. Seems that avian also suffer from anorexia.
Extended anatomy lesson, because why not? As shown above, bird wings are actually quite similar to a human arm, with most of the difference being in the hand. The Alula (the small thumb like protrusion on the top of the bird's wing,) can actually move independently, and thus is the closest thing a bird has to an actual finger. Since the starbound avians are supposedly a product of winged Superavians breeding with wingless tribal avians, the feathered hands can be seen as a sort of middleground between a wing, and a more practical, humanlike arm. I always imagine them having elongated hands and fingers, with simple (not at all sharp) claw-like protrusions on their fingertips. Of course, this is applying a lot of science to a 25-pixel high humanoid bird, but eh. Food for thought.
Feathered hands, seeing as they evolved from wings, do make sense. The only issue is that, yeah... Feathers on your palm would be really uncomfortable doing prehensile things. Like holding a spear, or a gun, or tools or cooking with raw meat and/or vegetables and... etc. I mean, you'd probably tear a few feathers out on a daily basis.
