Question How to make a character composed of smoke (particles)

Hi! In our project we create characters using a psd importer, artists draw layers of arms, legs, head, etc in Photoshop - and then all this is imported into Unity and a skeleton is created.
Example Below



And recently we decided to create a character, like similar to a spirit/jinn/ghost, his body is kind of "smoke", so, it consists of moving particles. Here is concept



And we would like to hear options on how to proceed in this situation? If we use particles, how do we give them the shape of its' body? We were also thinking about shaders, but to be honest I didnt have any experience with writing shaders and I don't know how hard it would be, especially since characters are made as separate layers and there could be a problem with mapping shaders. Or maybe some of you can share textures for particles, because the stock textures for smoke and fog don't really fit here. Also, we've been thinking about particle trails - maybe something can be done with them?
Thanks!

 

tested trails, i think it could be doable
(although this one used thousands of particles to look good..)


or maybe could create texture sheet from externally simulated particle vfx tools
https://www.dreamstime.com/smoke-ho...ng-seamless-loop-alpha-channel-video220756438

or scrolling texture+waving vertices for most performance..

*video clip from that particle effect, with some post processing:
https://twitter.com/unitycoder_com/status/1624071982198190091

 

just adding as reference, saw this plugin for similar effects:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/rel...y-a-tool-to-create-fluid-fx-in-unity.1400524/