Jay Ingle - lead developer, designer, and artist:
I recently took some placeholder animations, and made em look nice.
Here is the original, placeholder animation:
And how it looked in-game:
So I created a replacement animation:
Certainly an improvement, but it still isn't quite right. This is because to make the flame disappear, we are just reversing the animation. This makes it look like the flame is being sucked back into the ground. It looks kind of odd, kind of alien, and sometimes that is what I am looking for. It looks more like a flame being, than actual real flame. But let us see what it looks like, with a more realistic approach:
I'm gonna have to say that this final animation looks the best. I just need to keep in mind that what looks the "best" doesn't always evoke the feeling that I am looking for. But in this case, natural feels better than alien jank.