Hasta La Motion!

In my project I will have the smoke coming out of a bottle and turn into a man.
I am thinking of using an object shaped like a human, and emit smoke from this object.
Then set up some kind of goal or aim for the smoke to go to.

In Houdini 11 there is Pyro FX -> Wispy Smoke. Would it be the best way to create this effect?
And how to get the nice swirling movements one can see in the HP “Patronus spell”?
Leading the smoke with curves somehow?

Any tips or ideas would be great! (Step-by-step tutorial would be the best, but haven’t found any).

I’ve been a lurker for quite a while but now I’ve come to predicament which I really need some advice on.

Basically, I trained at Escape studios, got a runner job and through the job I was promoted to an unofficial ‘roto prep artist’ after 3 months. After half a year they upped my pay to £15k. Since then I’ve been here for another year and I’ve just had my yearly review and they’ve said they’re not upping my pay.

The reason for this is because I am the only Nuke operator in the company. It’s a small but very very successful post production company which deals mainly with adverts so all the operators here are flame ops. The girl who was in the library has just been made a flame assistant on £20k and she essentially does what I do. Roto/Prep.
So since I’m the only nuke op, no one really sees or knows what I’m doing. And it really isn’t a part of the workflow here. I just handed bits and bobs from the flame ops as and when they want it and lately I’ve had to learn Ocula for one of their jobs.
Now they’re saying to me that I need to essentially sell myself and nuke and grab more opportunities at work to show them what it can do and what I can do and in 3 months they’ll see if they want to give me a payrise.

I can’t show them all the things nuke does as I’ve only been using it for a year and theres a lot about it that I haven’t mastered. I have no support here – everything I learn is from the forum or support with the foundry. I guess I’m just angry and frustrated because this isn’t what I signed up for. I wouldn’t feel so bad if they were saying that my roto or prep has been bad and I needed to work harder but I’ve done so much work and it feels like just because Nuke isn’t the main tool here I’m getting shafted.

What would you do? Surely even as a roto artist I should be getting paid more than £15k…

I guess what I’m trying to ask is, would you leave and go for a position in a bigger company and be a prep artist on the right wage, or do you think this is a golden opportunity to develop a nuke workflow and eventually get paid more to be a more important person in the structure of the company. Personally I feel that because I’m still a novice this position is more suited to someone with more industry experience.

Sorry for the rant all but I don’t feel like anyone else would understand what I’m going though. 😮