A no-particle flame effect you can pull of with no plugins. There's some really cool VFX in the Captain Marvel movies, but my favourite is the firey aura that appears when Carol Danvers starts to use her powers. The process involved was shared in behind-the-scenes videos when Captain Marvel (2019) came out. In a nutshell, the VFX team recreate Brie Larson in 3D, and used the 3D model to drive complex particle simulations. Which apparently took months to refine. It's a bit of a shame they didn't consider using just After Effects to get a similar result! A similar effect can be seen in Netflix Sandman series (Rose in the garden).
Obviously what they did was way more complex and stunning, but in this tutorial, I show how to use a few, simple included effects to create the look of energy emitting in waves from a figure. I start using the rotobrush tool to quickly isolate the hero from their background. Then using the Find Edges effect, I get outlines for all their detail. CC Vector Blur along with some Fractal Noise creates the flame look and 4-Color Gradient adds some colour. This will get you a basic look, but there's nothing stopping you adding layers of this effect, with different settings to create richer, more complex flames.
