Well, I got a new Painting Programe. Still don’t know what it all does. But I’ve been toying around with it and this is what I have so far.
I want all suggestions, and comments on this piece.
Looking good. Keep playing around with it, you’ll be able to figure out all kinds of neat effects. 
If you’re going for realism… then I’m afraid you’ve got a fair way to go.
What’s the name of this painting program?
If you’d had Photoshop, I would’ve suggested looking at their brushes and glow tutorials (Especially stuff like lightsabre glows) and taking a look at some screengrabs of the particle streams.
But if this painting program isn’t Adobe… not sure how I can help.
Well I use, VCW VicMan’s Photo Editor.
Hmm, never heard of it.
Which could mean it was something that came free with something else.
Could you tell us more about it?
Keep at it… my proton stream has changed alot even up to the animated one that is on youtube into this…
Yeah, just keep going until you find something you’re happy with! It’ll get there! Eventually you’ll find a method that just works for you and you’ll be able to pop something out in about 2 or 3 minutes!
Yeah, like I did mine. I like having a good motion blur in there, as if our streams are really flying out of the gun tip. You do have the shape and proportionate sizes right though, keep at it man! Doing great
Well here it is my latest Proton Stream,
http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h208/TyFire/ProtonStream1.jpg
What programs did you guys use for the realistic looking proton streams in your pics?
the picture i posted was a still form my animated effect in after effects…
for anyone looking a good free program try http://gimpshop.net/ aparently its a bit like photoshop… mite be worth a look.
Um, any tips on how to use it…
i havent personally used it but if you use one of the proton stream tutorials for photoshop you should be able to replicate something close in this from the screengrab it does bare a remarkable resemblance to photoshop…
I use the gimp right now, and sadly, making good proton streams is no easy task. That’s really all I’ve been using it for since I got it, and it’s just not as easy as it is in photoshop. There’s no glow option for the layers. I’ll see what I can whip up and I’ll post it here with a tutorial for any gimp users.
Ok… so a tutorial on this was pretty hard. It was difficult for me to keep up with what I was doing, but I remember the most important bits!! 
After like, 20 minutes (in photoshop, this can be done in about 2) I got this. I think this is as close as a non-pro in Gimp can do.
You just go about your normal business, making a new layer, draw your beam blah blah. The most important part to get is the glow. You have to first duplicate the beam layer of just the beam, then go under “Script-Fu” and use the Alien Glow feature. Then, after setting your colors, you need to delete the once duplicated layer and the new layer titled “background#1” there. You have your glow. Now, you’re going to need to duplicate that layer a few times to make it noticeable. Keep in mind, set most layers here to “screen” to give it that glowy look. Your colors are going to wash out, so you want to modify the colors to be more orange. Go under tools>color tools and use what you’ve got. A little motion blur, some opacity and layer adjustments and you get that. It’s not that great, but it’s better than paint, IMHO.