This is a cat I just did for the fun of it in photoshop. I did some brushes for quick fire at work, with effects on the layers, you get pretty credible fire with two strokes. However before I got this right I made some failed fire brushes, including the one I used for most of the shading here. The color is made with layers of gradient maps, in my opinion it makes richer colors. However I am not sure about the background, but I am getting sleepy and have other things to do than trying backgrounds... anyhow it's not horrible.