orbs and gold melting effects

The melting could be created with all sorts of animated masks and "blobby" effects like Mr. Mercury or Glue Gun as well as any number of blur techniques. It will just be a lot of work, both on getting the motion and the shading. Tons of gradients and layer styles. The orb is pretty much any lens flare or glow technique under the sun you can think off, combined with some basic swirling strokes. I'm pretty sure it could easliy be pieced together from some tutorials under the subject "glowing orb" or the like. Video CoPilot definitely had some along those lines and definitely there are others you could find.

Mylenium