Tracey Strong Takes the Mystery Out of Animating Fire Traditionally With Some Great Tips

Stylus Rumble covers a couple of the techniques that animators use to create animated fire effects. If you are looking to add more traditionally animated elements to your motion graphics work, or you are a beginner animator, then Tracey Strong’s tutorials are a great place to start. Her latest looks into animating fire effects with a few simple tips. In fact, animating licking flames can be distilled down to two attributes: Subtracting and adding.

“There are countless styles and designs, but these are great for beginners or animators who just want to spruce up their scenes a little bit,” Tracy says while working in Toon Boom. A little while back, Tracey had a look at how to create smoke and dust effects, which like fire pose chaotic and amorphous details to take into account. Nonetheless, a short view of the tutorial and you will see that neither frame-by-frame smoke or animating fire are to be feared.