Snow White and the Particle Transformations

Despite what I might think of the film itself, I watched the trailer for Snow White & the Huntsman recently and noticed a theme. Something that features very frequently is people turning into particles of some form or another, whether it be smoke, birds, or shards of metal. Thinking about transforming from subject to particle I did a little research and found quite a lot of tutorials and so many ways to do this sort of transformation. Of course Video Copilot has some top-notch tutorials, but they can be pretty advanced.

Here are two easier, slow paced tutorials from Creative Cow starting with text to particles and moving on to human to particles.
Particle World Transitions 1
Particle World Transitions 2

And of course one of Andrew Kramer's tutorials that looked most applicable. It's quite long (almost an hour), but it is very in-depth and the product is a high caliber.