Charizard 3D Sprite with Animated Shader

 

I made this 3D Sprite of Shiny Charizard using Maya, Photoshop, and Unreal Engine 5. I started with a 

2D 64x64 pixels sprite from Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire and turned it into a 3D sprite using cubes and grid snapping. I wanted the tail to flicker and animate, so I made my own custom shader to accomplish this. I have a breakdown of my shader further down in this post for those interested in learning how to do something similar! 

Here is a high resolution video render of my project showing it in further detail:

Below I have an image of my shader to show it works. I used a sine wave node and lerp to change the emissive color and a SimpleGrassWind node to simulate flame-like movement. The result is a really nice material that changes both the emissive values and shape! 

A close up of my material nodes: