Nowadays, there is a growing need for flying drones with diverse capabilities for both civilian and military applications. There is also a significant interest in the development of novel drones that can autonomously fly in different environments and locations, and can perform various missions. In the past decade, the broad spectrum of applications of these drones has received great attention, which has subsequently led to the invention of various types of drones with different sizes and weights. One type of drone that has received attention by drone researchers is flapping wing nano air vehicles (NAVs). In design of these micro drones, shape and kinematics of the wing have been identified as important factors in the assessment of flight performance. As such, this work will focus on the wing shape and kinematics of flapping wing nano air vehicles with hovering and forward flight capability. These factors require an optimal design in terms of decreasing the needed aerodynamic and input power, and increasing the propulsive efficiency. This research evaluates bioinspired wing designs to determine the best shape for hovering and forward flight applications, with a particular focus on insects, which are regarded as ideal natural avian flier in hovering flight. Specifically, this research will focus on seven insect wings, and because of the difference in the original bio-inspired shape of these wings, two scenarios are studied, namely, considering the same wingspan and same wing surface. Using quasi-steady approximation to model aerodynamic loads and the gradient method approach to optimize the kinematics of the wing, the optimum Euler angles, required aerodynamic power, and hence the best wing shape for each scenario are analytically determined in hovering flight mode. It is demonstrated that the twisted parasite wing shape is a good candidate for minimizing the required aerodynamic power during hovering. Also, for forward flight application, strip theory is utilized to model and optimize the kinematics of the seven wings with a particular investigation on the impacts of the dynamic twist on the performance of bio-inspired nano air vehicles. A parametric study is then carried out to determine the optimum wing shape and associated dynamic twist of the flapping wing nano air vehicle when considering two scenarios same as hovering mode. Findings from this research show that for the same wingspan and wing surface, the honeybee and bumble bee wing shapes have the optimum performances, respectively. The performed analysis gives guidelines on the optimum design of flapping wing nano air vehicles for hovering and forward flight applications.