I was tasked with creating a simple sprite sheet for a fire animation at work, but my skills weren’t really up for the challenge in the amount of time I had.
But, since I’m pretty stubborn, I thought I’d continue and see if I can figure it out here. I went through a couple of iterations to end up with this:
This is it on twos:
It is a 16 frame loop. I’m not considering the interior shapes until I can nail the exterior ones. If anyone has any critiques, let me know, otherwise I’ll keep plugging along
The style reminds me a bit about the one from Kung fu panda. There’s a tutorial for it somewhere, but it was done pretty much like you seems to have done with spheres traveling upwards that subtracts the flame.
You’re on your way! Just follow reference you like frame-by-frame to observe what you’re missing. Study the motion and timing closely, and you’ll learn a lot very rapidly. The fire i did in the tutorial isn’t my favorite (hard to do a good job while recording and talking. lol), but the Dragon Trainer Tristana loop is much better. And it happens to be 16 frames as well!
