Fire Animation

By rhyging5 (Original Post).

1. Make a mask. This must to have the form you want. In this case, must be more or less like the sword. Note that have a outline totally blur, specially the up zone.
2. Draw the flames in a pixel art. Their size will affect subsequent animation. So take a look at the image to get an idea of an standard size. We must also decide the colour and appearance. I use some Photoshop filters, like brightness and others.
3. Make a vertical tile of theses flames to make the bulk of animation. Why vertically? because fire expires from the bottom upwards.
4. Apply the mask we make on first step to this tile.
5. To emphasize the brightness we can make another layer like this.
6. Make the tile move up 1 or 2 pixels every time, but keep the mask anchored where it is.
7. As an additional, we can make a different light/shadow that the fire produces on nearby objects (not included in this tutorial).

As you can see, with a little work, we can get some good FX. Hope it's useful!

Images

• Associated Image
• Example Animation

See Also

• Create
• Art Tutorials