Research into fire

I looked into moving imagery of fire as to give me inspiration for its fluid, flickering movement. I researched into both an illustrative and a real imagery of fire and found similarities. For instance, the way it snakes higher and flickers back down. I also found differences such as the colour, the cartoon version play on vivid reds and orange and yellows, the shape of the fire is more stylised for example adventure time.
The fire is more emphasized with in this cartoon through the mixture of jagged and smooth quality to the shapes. The fire in the animated film "Howls Moving Castle" takes a more realistic approach and makes the flames into one to form the body of the character Calsifer. This in affect makes the fire seem less lively, however the style of the fire works well with the interior backgrounds and the characters who interact with the flame.

Studying fire in real life gave a different perspective on the flames depicted in the cartoon style, in both Adventure Time and Howls Moving Castle. For example the flames were more violent and fast, flickering higher and dancing from side to side as it engulfs the logs. The shape of the fire differs as it bites deeper into the logs therefore the shape of the flames move almost around the shape of the log and connects back to the original body of the flame.

After researching into different imagery of fire, I decided that I wanted to take a cartoon approach but with inspiration from the book, "Elemental Magic" by Joesph Gilland. His stylised fire managed to capture a form of detail that gave the fire life. I wanted to try my own take on this and I began sketching different takes on whether do create jagged or fluid lines, and what effect this would make on the rest of the composition if used in the final animation.