Elemental Magic , Volume 2

Chapter 4

Lighting a Fire

When I went looking for great fire animation, I found out that at the time when the Disney special effects animators were doing incredibly masterful water animation on movies like Pinocchio (1940) and Bambi (1942), their fire animation, while dramatic and beautifully done, did not have the same fluid mastery of their water effects by any stretch of the imagination.

The fire in Bambi, for instance, shoots and licks forward, but it does not roll and boil in heat waves and belching smoke with the voluminous intensity that later Disney effects animators mastered in their fire and smoke animation. The fire in Bambi was stiff ...