https://ldooley-penn.github.io/hw01-fireball/
I wanted to create a flame-like character, so I started by shaping the ears. I did this by using a cosine in x multiplied by one in y, which creates a potato chip shape that I thought would be a good start. I then wanted to pull the ears back as they went up, so I used an easing function along with the vertex y position to displace them backwards.
To give it a more dynamic flame-like appearance, I used worley noise. But to make it smoothly move up the character over time, I added a displacement in an upwards and back direction that increased over time, which made the bumpy surface roll up the character's head. I also added an inner flame by scaling down the outer surface and making it opaque.
I used a handful of functions to give the flames a dirty pulsing appearance that kind of looks like streaks of dust or wind to highlight the bumps. I started by using a triangle wave to map the domain of time being [0, infinity) to an oscillating [0, 1] range. Once I had the 0 to 1 oscillator, I mapped this using a gain function to spend more time at the ends of the animation. I used smootherstep to actually do the color mapping, so the white and base colors would be more accents.
I also added a background that pulses between red and black dots using sinusoidal functions.