Inspiration: Fire, Flames, and Infernos

Feb 25th in Articles by Sean Hodge

Ignite your creative fire with inspirational artwork and ideas. Jump off to tutorials that will teach you how to fire up your own work. Get your creative digital fire right here! And get it while its hot!

Author: Sean Hodge

Hi All! I recently moved to the outskirts of Orlando, Florida. I'm the editor of Psdtuts+ and Vectortuts+. Also, visit my blog AiBURN where I feature some of my creative work and ideas. Or follow me on Twitter: @seanHodge.

Digital Art

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  Abstract Blaze Design

  Blazedezignz put together a really cool abstract fire design in Photoshop. He points to tutorials on the net for how he figured out how to do this in Photoshop and says that its about 10 different image effects combined together. Looks great!

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  Tremorwave's Destruction

  Depthcore is an awesome site to inspiration from. Take a look at the artist Tremorwave. Here it the quote he has in his profile "Give a man fire he will be warm for a day, set him on fire he will be warm for the rest of his life."

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  Damnengine

  Ther is some hellacious imagery in this portfolio. Dennis Sibeijn's portfolio has fiery infernos, demons, explosions, and such a wonderful dark style.

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  Fire Portrait

  Check out this stylized portrait with a hand in flames. It looks to me like the flames were added with screen applied to a flame picture shot against a dark background. Though the artist states that this was all accomplished with brushes. Lots of ways to accomplish similar techniques.

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  Abstract Fire Design

  While there is no actual fire in this design it does capture a feeling of fire. The colors and movement of the shapes of this piece gives you a different perspective on fire.

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Tutorials

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  Fire Lines Tutorial

  This tutorial has some similar effects to Advanced Glow Effects here on PSDTUTS or Electrifying Energy Beams over at Luxa. This tutorial will show you how to add fire effects to your glowing line work.

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  True Flames

  This tutorial looks really easy to do and has a cool effect.

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  Smokey Fire Letter

  Video on making a letter catch fire in Photoshop. There is no sound, but you can follow along just fine. Each Photoshop step is shown as the artists creates the smokey flaming text.

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  Semi-Realistic Fire

  The effect in this tutorial doesn't have the "Wow Factor," but don't rule it out because of that. The techniques presented in this tutorial are not as reliant on filters as some other effects. It starts off by drawing your flame effects. So, there is a lot of control with these techniques. In the hands of a great artist they could use these same techniques to make Realistic Fire rather than Semi-Realistic Fire. Its a good tutorial and work checking out.

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  Intensive Eyes Filled with Fire

  I was pulled in by this tutorial because it has a strong concept tied to the use of the effect. The ideas is someone is watching there house burn down and the image of the flames is in their eye. That's a strong concept.

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  Burning Wheels

  While I think this tutorial lacks some realism its still cool. And it covers a popular topic. Placing fire on objects in motion, especially cars, is an advertising concept that's been used many times with good results.

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  Dark Book of Photoshop

  The artists tend to spend a good deal of time designing their tutorials on Deviant art. Its a different approach. This tutorial covers a few techniques. The one on fire is really simple, but effective. It teaches you to use fire photos shot against black backgrounds (shot at night for example) to overlay your designs with a Screen blend mode placed on the layer.

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Other Cool Stuff

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  Flickr Group: The Shape of Fire

  There are pictures of fire, people playing with fire, time lapse fire motion trail photography, and more. Group's Message: "This group is dedicated to photographs of the many shapes that fire can take. Chaotic and beautiful, flames can imitate anything imaginable. Like lying on your back and picking out figures from clouds, your mind (and the ability of others to relate to it) are the limit."

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  Creative Fire

  A fun flash portfolio site for Creative Fire. You have the option to Play it safe and follow traditional navigation. But the fun navigation option is: Play with Fire! With this option you get to use a red hot bottle of creative fire and shoot out the sauce at the different nav options. Cool concept and a fun way to navigate.

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  Burning Man: Creative Fire in the Desert

  This is a good article about the on the artistic and cultural significance of the Burning Man Festival from a personal perspective. Vivid descriptions of the venue. There is a small slideshow as well with photos from the 2003 festival.

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  Light a Flame of Inspiration

  In his article "What inspires you?" David Airey gives some of his sources of inspiration. He also references a group project at Inspiration Bit on this subject Group Project: Source of Inspiration. Some great comments on this post as well. Here is a part of the first comment "You’re right, there are so many things around us that can spark an inspiration flame, all we need is to capture, seize that moment - 'carpe diem' and realize it in our work." If your interested in the firing up your inspiration visit the article below.

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