I could never draw fire. Its one of the most elementary particle effects, and I never got it right. So I took a methodical approach to spriting and its paying off well. Heres the sprite I base mine off, from Castlevania Aria of Sorrow;
I figure a very basic 4 frame animation, in which the movement vertically loops around several times- the same 'swirls' of fire travelling upwards start at the bottom and go upwards maybe 12 or 16 frames, looped around. So I start by putting the base of the fire, and drawing little marks to indicate where the puffs will go, 3 times;
Next I add in the base colors- a high white in the center that goes from left, middle, right, middle, and a yellow outline of that, and an orange backround that does the same looping effect again- puffs up a bit and ended up going over the 4 frames about 12 times there.
Then add in some shading touches and turn those swirls from the start into bright spots in the fire, which dim as they move upwards;
Put together, it animates kinda nice;
Also, I've finished 49 different physics objects so far, which I estimate to be about 1/3 of all physics objects for the whole game. They don't take much resources, so I'm having fun churning them out. Check the below post if you missed what thats about!
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Pixelthief 
You're doing fine as is!
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