Certainly effective! I's guess crumpled or moulded clear sheet too, painted in clear colours with lighting inside, and a hidden wire to a prop motor.
The impressive part is the smoke - tinting and teasing out cotton wool rarely works that well.
So I saw Al's start on his P-38 and it reminded me of JRutman's Revell conversion in 1/32 so I thought I post a couple of pics of his fabulous scratch built pit and I mean all of it was scratched!!