Well, at first look, I thought 'Hey, it's just sprites with a toon shader."

Then I thought about it a little bit more

Some ideas:

*Particle instancing:
Paint a "cloud-type" shape in Photoshop, and map that onto a simple poly plane in Maya.
Use that cloud-object as your object to instance so when your object comes down for a landing, ramp up the emittion rate.
Make your emaitter an omni so it emits outwards by default.
Tweak from there.

Are you goiung for the toon look?

I ask as my next idea(s) are not meant for that kind of look.

Lemme know