How do i make the gun fire shots?

[suprdave]

I did my first dio story for my yahoo group, and i need help doing the gun fire shots for the guns, and troops. is there a site, or way i can make the gun fire look more realistic?(i made mine look like laser fire.)

thanks

dave

[Outrider]

Man, that's something I'm still trying to perfect myself. Assuming you have Photoshop or similar, just play around with the brush tool using yellow around the outside of the flash and white towards the middle, and use a smaller brush size as you move away from the muzzle. Then perhaps smudge it a little to smooth it out and add a little smoke effect for realism. If you have a look through the photos section, you will find heaps of pictures by various people that should give you some ideas. After all, it's not copying, it's borrowing an idea! :)

[General Hawk]

What I did personally was grab a Google image of a muzzle flash and do some work on it to make it a transparent Photoshop image (.PSD file). Now I can just import that file and add blurs/transform it however I need to.

It ends up being pretty versatile...allowing me to do shots like this:

http://generalsjoes.com/images/dioramas/misdirection/misd09-16.jpg

and this as well:

http://generalsjoes.com/images/dioramas/reunions/reun04-46.jpg

Just a matter of transforming it, and adding the right amount of motion blurs.

Justin