Okay guys, I decided to post this project in here for support, help, ideas, and feedback. So anyways the goal here is for me to improve on some animation and game specific skills that I feel I need to master such as animation and I want to make some decent blood effects as well (never done blood before so any links to tutorials would be terrific)…
Now its just going to be a simple short video where the character on the left runs the other through the abdomen with his katana as blood gushes from his back a la God Of War. Perhaps in the future after I’m done with this I can expound upon that and have a really cool fight sequence, but for now I just want to use this to get better at blender. I was also thinking of adding a collapsing tower to the explosive fire and smoke in the backdrop just to make it more epic. So thats the idea so any suggestions or ideas on any of this while I’m making this scene would be most appreciated.
Image of progress so far (Note: Still setting it up and still have to add some bones to the character on the lefts armature so to account for the sword)
Working on building collapse and not sure what the best way is. I want it to slowly collapse into little pieces. I figure I could just have it separated into little peices and then use cloth physics or something, but thats not working out. I could use ideas please…
In Blender 2.5 there is a fracture add-on. Enable it by going into the add-on tab in user preferences. Hope it all works out. 
Nice look so far! The fire could use a lot of work though. I have a blend file saved somewhere of some really good fire that is a mesh with displaced textures that looks good when animated and doesn’t take that long to render. I’ll poke around a bit.
The figures themselves look good, not mush in the way of detail but this is for animation practice than texturing so that’s not a big deal. I like the pose itself, except for the bearded guy. The way the left guys sword looks as if it was just flung out of the way by the guy on the right. Adjust for that, maybe with the Bearded guy’s sword arm across his chest, as if finishing the swing that knocked the left guys sword out of the way.
The lens flare. Normally, I hate seeing them because they’re always so bright. Good to see that you didn’t go over the top with it. I would still suggest working some Ghost Glare Nodes on the flare halo in a separate layer, to give it some more oomph, then compositing them back together.
All in all, looks good. Could look a lot better, but for animation practice, it looks alright.