Hi

I'm relatively new to houdini but I am looking to create some fire with a stylized shape with a realistic render. wondering if anyone can off up any tips on how to achieve the desired look.

Please excuse me, but I fear you're being a little too vague.
Please post reference for what you want. Either a video or stills along with a more precise description will help us help you.

All apologies, you are quite right.

Basically Im trying to marry up realistic fire movement with strong graphic shapes. I'm getting half decent results but still can seem to get the nice licks and overall strong shape.

Some examples of the look i'm trying to get.

http://vimeo.com/26194387 [vimeo.com]

Ah, ok, I understand now.

What you want is a sharp gradient in your flame's density gradient. Look in your pyro shader's controls and find that. It's a smooth curve. Fiddle with the two points until you get good coverage and the kind of cut off you want. See attached image for rough starting spot.

ACTUALLY… your best bet is to use a volume visualize SOP to get the area and then put in the numbers in your shader. (That's under the import_pyro_build Object's import_pyro_visualization SOP, stick the volume vis SOP there.)

And then if that's too transparent overall just crank the fire density's “Final Amplitude” (1.5 by default) (which is waaay at the bottom of that tab).

Good luck!

For further inspiration check out the movie Hellboy's magical blue flames.