Moho Forum

Does anyone have a reference guide or site that they visit concerning animating special effects? For example: fire, water, spinning effects, extreme fast motion (like hummingbirds or extreme running).

I need a cartoony style for these effects.

Thanks in advance.

I'm not aware of any website collecting this stuff, but there was a book about Disney special effects which would be a good start.

My own reference just comes from picking up some solution here and there.
Fire: a good one was in "Timing for animation":

Spinning, fast motion: smears and multiples. There's at least a website dedicated to that: http://animationsmears.tumblr.com/
Vibrations: a drawing in "Illusion of life".

Elemental Magic is also a good book about that.

http://www.cartoonsolutions.com/ has some tutorials

examples:
http://www.quaife.us
http://www.allenblyth.com/blyth_fx_demo.html

poke about on youtube and vimeo for tutorials too. There's a lot out there, sprinkled about. Centralized and simple, not so much.

In addition to the above recommendations you might want to take a look at Adam Philips' special effects course for 2D animation. It's a monthly subscription, which you can cancel at any time. http://bitey.com/2010/08/bca-fx/