is it zbrush? my preference would be to do anything that requires a lot of transform manipulation and selections in a regular 3d program like blender or maya. You wouldnt need any special techniques to do it there other than just group feathers into layers so you can select them easy. If you set pivot point to the base of…
My advice would actually be to look at sculptures of wings, especially stone carvings, to see what simplifications they make. If you look at these sculptures, you'll see an emphasis on form over detail; the detail's mostly just there to sell that individual feathers make up the larger structures. You never see individual…