What I did when I made a candle flame (it was a long time ago so I may miss something) was make an object that has a flame shape, meta formed it a lot so it has many segments, applied gradiants and procedurals to the color and transparancy, and as for animating, I used procedurals as a displacement map.
Here is the way it looked, I know it's not a very good picture (remember, it was some time ago) but it's just to show the resaults of the candle. (I also added a volumetric point light.)
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