[Help] How to make Water/Ice/Bubble Effects?

[Midday-Mew]

There are many ways to convey water, ice and bubble effects. The sprites you're thinking of most likely succeed for different reasons, so your question is actually extremely vast.

My advice is that you search for what ice looks like for example, how it's formed, and how it affects various materials. From there you'll understand the basic ideas behind ice, and you'll be able to work on how to stylize it - as in, which aspects of ice you will keep to effectively represent ice. Drawing studies of ice in those regards will help you with spriting.

You could always imitate an exisiting sprite's style, which will help you understand more the style rather than the ice/water/bubble. This is the way to go if you want to emulate a look which you like.

One issue. I live in a place where ice does not naturally occur, in fact, manmade ice melts pretty quickly no matter what time of the year it is....I live in Florida. So doing real-life studies of ice would require me to, like, take a vacation to some cold climate or something. Unless you expect me to stay inside a room-sized freezer? -imagines self wearing clothes like the Ice Climbers, heh-

Any other ideas? Normally the best way to go would be to use real-life examples, but here-in lies the problem: I have vision issues in that I don't have a complete range of vision. I have holes in my vision. Not to mention that the popping of a bubble and water effects happen too fast for me to observe properly to even get a good idea of how it looks. (I suppose if I had a slow-motion camera, I could film it...Hm....I wonder if a certain older brother of mine has one....)

I would try watching documentaries, but....I dunno how well that'd work out. Would that work as a substitute? If I were to do that, the main issue I'd face is inconsistent lighting when trying to mimic the shading. I guess the main issue I have is with anything involving simulated partial transparency, I guess.