Greetings:
Just messing with the new particles to try to achieve some nice looking feathers yet keeping it simple and the particles count low.
C&C welcome
wow looks awsome however i think the particles have a little way to go
Greetings:
Thanks for the comment Aidan, i forgot to activate the shadows in the last one 
, here it is with the shadows, i think this one looks more “featherly”.
looking nice. The model is great but I agree on the feathers. They are just strokes no feathers. I don’t know if it is possible to do this with the new particle system…
Joost
think square feathers dont exist in real life, but u got a great model, and its better than my big hairy mini mini king kong so cant say yours is bad 
and I dont know if the particle can use texture, if it can that will be great
Greetings:
Thanks for the comments, unfortunately you cant map the particles by uvmap, that way i could give them a more featherly look, or if you could define a middle size for the strand, but i think that the square shape is too obvious because of the render being so close, looking it from further away really simulate the feathers effectively.