energy ball

What is your approach to making an energy ball in blender 3d? My idea so far is to use hard noise on a sphere… but how would you animate the texture? And make it glow more? Kind of like thishttp://www.shiningstarlimited.com/images/Charmed%20Tutorials/Cole%27s%20Energy%20Ball%20Final.jpg
or this if you wanted a tail trail
http://d3gphd0pfuxn95.cloudfront.net/499_energy/thumbnail.jpg

In most games, anything that is the same looking on all sides is a sprite. IE “energy balls”.

If you wanted it in 3D you’d have the model for the middle (maybe even a light), the model for the outside & particles (or similar) going between/around. I’d even say animated 2D textures on planes would be very useful for some of the effect.

Thanks for replying. Yeah, I was thinking of something sort of on that line. I’m really wondering about compositing it though. It maybe better if I could see an example.