Hi guys!
I’m new to vfx and I am trying to learn as much as I can while creating effects for a portfolio. I would appreciate the harsh truth feedback where you don’t hold back anything if possible. Thank you! 
I’ve been trying to follow the principles of anticipation, climax and dissipation, and following a color palette theme for ice.
Good start!
Here’s a tip for color: You don’t really need a palette, per se – you more need an understanding of how colors are related. I find the HSV color space much easier to work with than RGB. Also, you want to use floating-point values, not hex codes.
With HSV values, finding a related set of colors is easy. Pick a base color, and then derive subsequent colors by varying S or V. You can even do this programmatically inside a shader/material.
If I had made your ice effect, for example, I would have picked a blue-ish color, then adjusted V to get different intensities. The most intense piece of the trail is the highest value of V (note you can use values above 1.0 in most CG systems). The least intense is a much lower value of V. That gives you a gradient.
Adjusting the saturation (S) is useful for tinting. Take a base color, and multiply it by a desaturated version of another color. Or brighten a color by adding the desaturated version of another color.
Give that technique a try!
Have fun!
Thanks alot! I followed your advice and picked just a single base color based on its hue, keeping saturation and value at 1. Then I adjusted the S and V for each of the systems and emitters.
Here is the result:
What do you think?
Looks good! I think it’s a little saturated for an ice effect, but it depends on the context. But it looks like you applied the technique correctly.
The point of that technique is you could use any base color: you could, for example, pick a red-ish hue and then it would be sort of a fireball effect. It’s good to reuse FX where you can!
Thanks alot for the help! I will definitely use this technique in my next effects aswell! 
And I will probably tone down the saturation abit. I did exaggerate it a little to really get a feel for the tech.
If anyone has anymore feedback it is very welcome! 