This was a hard one! Molotov cocktail impacts have so much going on. The initial flame from the ignited gas, the combustion of the main propellant and the spreading lingering fire. 

I've been poking around with 2D effects a bit more, so here are some different looping fire effects! 

​Gasoline fire

And here is a version with a little less intensity 

I've always preferred grenade effects that don't overdo explosion part, but rather focuses on the smoke/dust so I made one! EDG32 palette 

I tried fixing the last 2 frames and the irregular GIF loop, but it seems Photoshop can only export gifs at max 50 FPS, even though I set the max to 60. Oh well, here is the fixed version albeit too slow. 

Revisited the burning tire and fixed the smoke. This is EDG32

I like directional fires above static ones that just go straight up. So I made one!

Wolf3D palette

EDG32

Comet/fireball

I've continued to poke around with effects, this time it's 2D pixel art! I used the Wolf3D palette for this one

And EDG32

I had avoided to put in some kind of smoke in the grenade explosion because the smoke "overwrote" the other effects. Then my friend just told me to move the smoke a bit behind the stuff and I felt pretty dumb for not even thinking of that. Doh! So I added a bit of smoke and also tweaked the curves for other effects to make it more dynamic and less static and boring. 

I re-created the grenade explosion, using some stuff I learned while making the bullet impact. Screen algnment: PSA velocity is pretty useful for creating sparks and real sharp shrapnel. I also realized that I thought I could not use size over life for the bullet impact, but that was just me being silly. So I need to revisit that too. 

Continuing poking around in cascade using the primitive shape materials. This time, I attempted a bullet impact. Again, learned a lot while poking around with this one.

To familiarize myself with cascade I attempted a grenade explosion limiting myself to the square, circle and triangle shaped materials. I am also limited to only using these in cascade: 

Acceleration > Acceleration Drag
Color > Initial Color, Color Over Life
Lifetime > Lifetime
Light > Light
Location > Initial Location, Shapes
Rotation > Initial Rotation
Rotation Rate > Initial Rotation Rate
Orientation > Lock Axis
Size > Initial Size
Velocity > Initial Velocity, Velocity Over Life, Cone

Might not look much to the world, but I learned a lot poking around in Cascade. Will attempt bullet impacts next.

My good friend gave me a material/cascade primer, so I will now attempt to create a few effects. However he restricted me to use basic shapes and materials to begin with. I also have a restriction on what functions to use in Cascade. I think that's a great idea since it makes me focus on the movement and the effect itself instead of flashy eye candy. Looking forward to familiarize myself with cascade and upload the results. This is a completely uncharted territory for me. These are the shapes I will use.