After I open apophysis itself first fucking thing I do is make a NEW RANDOM BATCH with THIS BUTTON RIGHT HEEEERE
After that you should look over all the random flames it just shat out to pick out which matches what you want to make the most.

I ended up deciding on this one for no real reason in particular other then liking the pattern the fractal itself was making, try to avoid the fuzzy er flames like the black fucking plague, but its still worth experimenting I guess since I don't know shit.

Next I go to the most bad ass, powerful and all around manliest window in the whole program, the EDITOooOOOOOoor

LOOK AT THIS SHIT
DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHATS GOING ON?
Those are TRIANGLES. TRIANGLES ARE FUCKING USEFUL
Try moving them around. THEY MOVE SHIT.
Make one bigger (dragging the dotted edge). SHIT GETS BIGGER
What happens when you make it smaller? YES YOU'RE FUCKING RIGHT THE FLAME GETS SMALLER HOLY SHIT.
Also ROTATE them and SHIT.

anyway, on top of all the EXTREMELY LIFE ALTERING shit you can do with just the triangles themselves, you can also fuck around with motherfucking VARIABLES.
First lets check out that sexyass SINUSOIDAL and set it to ONE to SEE WHAT HAPPENS

...


HOLY SHIT WHAT THATS NOT AT ALL WHAT I WANTED ok after you calm your shit you can try lowering the number down until shit manages to form a solid ish silhouette

like that.

Right this is all nice and foggy, I guess it sorta has a shape, but I want dem CURVES.
For this I fuck with SPHERICAL or SOME TIMES SOMETHING ELSE when I'm BORED.

Even just set at one you can get a fairly nice effect going, but personally its a bit too hollow for my tastes, so I lower the setting down to 0.4 ZERO POINT FUCKING FOUR

OH SWEET JESUS CHRIST THATS COOL
I already flipped massive shits, however to get just the way I wanted it I adjusted the triangles (fucking TRIANGLES) a little.

I CAME

Right next up is some IMPORTANT SHIT so MAKE SURE you're PAYING ATTENTION and SCREAMING THESE CAPSLOCKED WORDS IN YOUR HEAD

This flame is already pretting ballin but personally I think it would look much better with a DEVASTATING BLUE HUE
Time for GRADIENTS UP IN THIS MOTHERFUCKER.

Not much else to say about that, pick the gradient with the colors you like and use the slider until the right colors are on the right sections.
FUCK.

I ended up deciding on this