AM Q3 ASN1 VIKING reference and planning

A new quarter, a new mentor and new exciting assignments. This quarter I got Jalil Sadool an animator at Weta, he has a reputation as a tuff love kind of kind of mentor, I'm looking forward to it (and dreading it) becuase I know it will be tough but it should help me to be a better animator which is the whole idea. This quarter I am doing the animation Jam, where we pick a theme and animate a series of exercised in the theme, when the week started I was overwhelmed with the possibilities and had no idea what to do. Then I looked at all the props that they gave us and found I could make him look like this!
It was now clear what I was going to do. VIKING WARRIOR! So seeing as I wanted to the animation jam the idea is to make 3 different excersizes that embody this theme and relate to one another with out be necessarily seamless. So my idea is that in the first assignment that he is a viking in training and he isn't very good. Then assignment number two he is still in training but he is awesome! Then in assignment number three he goes out to fight the mythic beast, played by our old friend Ballie.

So this week I was hanging out with my good friend Rick-O and I asked him to help me film my reference video. I didn't have a real specific plan, just to have the viking use his shield and sword and attacking a tree (pillar) with mixed success and then reacting by running away. Here is the best of what we came up with, we shot 36 shots and I picked the best ones that had similar things going on in them that I really like.

We filmed a couple of other ideas too but I liked this idea that he screamed and ran looking all crazy and bad ass and then when he hits the sword flies out of his hands and he freaks out throws his shield and runs away.
Page one
I drew out the whole scene with the staging on top of each other like a 2d animation along with arcs and general notes about how I plan to break up the scene.
Page two
Break down sketches of all the keys with notes on how to change between them. I needed more break downs for the run, but it would all just be a repeating cycle of the run and I felt it would be redundant. I feel the hardest part is going to be this swing over the head.
Page 3
Fleeing away very timidly breakdown sketches and notes, again here I didn't full draw out the keys because it is a simple bent knee run.

After shooting the reference I am really excited to start animating this! I can't wait to hear back from my mentor and get a feeling for his critique style.