Nice work so far, the sprites aer looking pretty good!
forgive me for saying so but the HUD is really FF1 and simply needs to be revised, at least to a point where it is clear and legible but ideally a complete redesign to make it more modern and user-friendly.
because your animation is only 2 frames, you're going to run into a lot of trouble regardless, but i will still suggest staggering the animations slightly so that some go up and some go down at different times.
the first half of the rock animation is great, but the fade out is lackluster. I'd say break them into smaller and smaller rocks instead of just noise. Also, it's slightly weak, but since it's his first spell that could be your point.
Background would benefit form some perspective and general interest. you can put very interesting architectural forms back there without distracting.
