Hello Inkscape Forum!
I'm wishing to create an effect that is best described as alike to a shooting star. I want to have one end thick and bright, but narrow and darken towards the other end. I also want to be able to adjust the tail's path to make it curve however I want. A good example is the effect in the following image.



I've attempted to isolate the effect from the image. Sorry about the image quality. It's hard to isolate the effect without cutting into it.



Since I'm inexperienced with Inkscape, I haven't much of an idea on how to recreate the effect. If anyone could attempt to create this effect, or an equivelent, and give some detailed instructions on how to create it yourself, I'd be very appreciative.
Thanks in advance.

Well, this is quite easy
All fires I make by the blur, transparency and multi-copy..
like this fire:


http://www.dreamstime.com/match-and-fire-funny-image-surrealizm-painting-image8542164

try to make some tutorial 4u.. just a moment

here it is..

excuse, I using the Russian language program =) but i belive everything will be clear understand

Do a rough sketch


incurve form


make larger copy of flame


3rd copy


remove path


make a copy of all 3 flames (add some blur to them and opacity) and past them over old


hide blured-fires


making 4th copy of fire (darker) and putting it under all other objects:


blur effect


hide 4th blured object and select all remaining


CTRL+G (making group)


CTRL+C & CTRL+ALT+V (copy and past to the original position)


make a half-transparent and a little blur


move on the back (END-button)


disclose all hidden objects


lets look how much objects we made:
ofcourse it's not necessarily to create so much a lot of copies, but I really belive that it makes fire more good looking =)
CTRL+KP_5 (carcase view)


CTRL+KP_5 (carcase view)


CTRL+KP_5 (reterning to normal view)


ready picture:
http://www.petaimg.com/u411/329shootingStar.png

Thanks a lot for such an in-depth tutorial! I'll show you my result once I'm done.

That's a great tutorial, but it seems that you really need to simulate a sort of blur-gradient to get the effect just right. Ideally the foreground or head of the shooting star should be more crisp, with the tail becoming ever more blurred toward the end. I tried getting that sort of effect by making some duplicates with different gradients and stretching them. The gradients are from transparent to full opacity, thus simulating the increasing blur as you move toward the tail. Not perfect, but I suspect if one did more steps with more precise stops in the gradient you could get a pretty good result. Here's mine:

I did a couple of other trials because I wasn't happy with the color blending on the tail of the first one. So here's the next attempt. I did a few more steps with more attention to gradients. I think it worked a little better.

And just showing the overlays:


Had another idea. Instead of using gradients with transparency you could use a mask, which is what I used for this example:
All the shapes are stacked from least blurred to most, then a mask from black to white top to bottom was applied to the whole group to get the result on the far right.

The common thing to both of these techniques is that the head of the comet is crisp and the tail is progressively blurred.