ok...this is going to be more than a few images, so I might spread it between a few messages.... First off, I (obviously) started with making the figure and gun, putting a spotlight on him from where the explosion would be (I told the spotlight to point at his body, then moved it to the tip of the explosion, and turned up the ending angle and intensity) I had an "explosion" object parented to the end of the gun the particle blast by Akisiel at props guild - http://www.gwz.org/propsguild/files/fxprops/ actually, I had two, one smaller than the other, with the larger one having a red ambience and the smaller one a white ambience....this creates a glowing centre to the explosion so after the render and some touching up to the figure I had this