Rendering Feathers on character, Best option?

Hey all,

I have a bit of a preference question I guess? I’m not 100% sure, but I’m currently trying to figure out the best method of approaching this issue.

[CONTEXT] I’m making a game with a couple self imposed technical limitations, I’m aiming for a PS2/ PSP feel (I know this is essentially just low resolution as theres much less quirkiness than say PSX), but this limits me to pretty basic techniques for achieving the look I want…

The player character has patches of exposed feathers on the model and I’ve tried multiple ways of showing this, ranging from; plain texture painting with some basic mesh shapes, cards with a feather texture plastered over these areas, and basic shell texturing (albeit this was a super quick test with a free project I found online)

Based on the hardware at the time I’m not quite sure what the best method of going about this would be?

I love the look of the shell textured fur (will make this into feathers once I’ve created my own shell shader) and I’m able to cheese it a little by obviously having the benefit of modern hardware but I don’t want something like this to look too out of place in the scope of the aesthetic…

EDIT: the best example I can reference would be shadowing of the colossus

I would love to hear your thoughts on this and maybe get an external opinion to help guide my decision! 😄

P.S currently at work so I can’t provide photos at the moment.

TLDR:

PS2 aesthetic/ constraints Have tried; plain textures, cards with feather alpha, Shell texturing material Thoughts?