Your Tips for Special FX (Water, Fire, Lightning)

[Thrashador]

Hi guys,
I have an animation where I'm going to include water, fire, and lightning effects, and I'm pretty new to animating those kind of special FX. Do you have any of your own tips or tricks for them?

Thanks,
Thrashador

[Poptoogi]

These are pretty old videos I made but they might help!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIGQHio41jc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVEjljbw7Tc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szzJOyo_gv0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWA_1wFBaE0

[jahnocli]

You could look through some episodes of Odd Job Jack ( freely available via Bit Torrent):
All 13 Episodes
Just about every episode includes effects using water, steam, blood(!), fire etc. The files are Flash .fla format, so you will also need a version of Flash. An old one will do -- the original series used Flash MX2004 or similar. I use Flash 8 - it's plenty good enough. Export what you want in some old Illustrator format and you're good to go.

[Thrashador]

Thanks so much guys! These are some awesome resources!

Thrashador