VFX Development - Wisp Research

So I thought I should take a look on line as what a wisp really was, and what results I would get for simply searching wisp. I knew what I had in my head what a wisp was so I need to know what other people believe them to be aswell. Firstly the definition of wisp which if I'm being honest wasn't the best explanation, it was a different context.

Next I took a look at something from my favourite series of books entitled 'The Sword of Truth' where beings knowns as 'nightwisps' exist. There was a TV series adaptation of the book of which they are shown in, as you can see they are very similar to the wisps seen in brave. All though this wisp is contained in a vial for what reason I don't know, but there is another scene in the series where the nightwisp is moving freely through the air. No light trails though.

Next I needed to see what real world wisp trails look like, there are two ways I could go about this. One is looking at smoke which seems to disperse out going in one general direction, as seen below.

I like this however, it's not the type of style I'm going for not to mention that making this glow would be tricky. So I also looked at light trails, specifically I search 'neon light trails' but you could use replicate this using a long exposed shutter shot on a camera and moving a small light source around in front of it.

And after watching a small tutorial on the old iPod advertisement, that featured silhouetted people dancing with light trails coming from their iPods. I grabbed that image aswell for ideas of the movement should look.

So then for visual purposes, I decided to take my images in to Photoshop and recreate some still image wisps my self. This is what I came up with. Take note that this is only a still image, and may not fully reflect on how the final VFX version is done. Which is why I am choosing not to explain the process of this.