If you’re tracing then if you are making it smart-stretchable go ahead and create the movable node go from under the effect itself to a bit over it, then trace the effect inside the space not over it.

Make sure to use segments, not circles and ellipses as they can often stretch weird so sticking to segments and polyfills is probably best.

If you’re doing your own then consider what state of matter the effect is, if it’s a gas like fire then it will expand and not stick to essentially anything but rather touch and avoid whatever surface it’s hitting. If a fireball were to be thrown and hit a wall it would warp to the surface of the flat wall a bit at first but then quickly expand out and away from it, keep in mind it’d also go up near the end when it dissipates. Start big, break apart then go small and break apart more.

With liquid like water if it were to be a drip then it would stick a lot more to surfaces and follow it’s shape, if the water is hovering then make it ripple. It just relies on ripples and splashes, It’s a bit of a difficult one to get right.

With solids they would also follow suite to fire and not stick, they’d hit other surfaces but not get merged together unless the impact was heavy and strong. Depending on the shape of the object breaking apart you’d need to follow suite to the shape and see how you could make a cube for example break apart so rather than random chunks add corners that have been broken etc. Unlike water it won’t keep breaking and getting smaller, it will crumble but unless exposed to a large amount of force when impacting something it will not break but instead retain it’s shape.

If they have anymore questions tell them to DM me on Discord.