Animated Claw Marks

I want to make animated claw marks in mid air near the attack, a representation of a scratch attack, but I'm not sure how to go about it. Would it be better to use animated sprites or some sort of particles?

 

Do you mean something like this?
https://streamable.com/zgute

Here's a closer view and paused in time (only UV animation)
https://streamable.com/sj7af

If you mean that: those are 3 half-cylinders, bent around in a half circle (made in blender, pretty simple)
then animated so it rotates and moves,
and finally textured using a shader that uses simple UV scrolling + a mask that is scolled a little slower + a mask that fades out the effect towards the edges of the mesh.

 

Thanks that will help a lot, I think I'm just confused as to which situations to use the particle system vs just making something in Blender.

 

You can use both ... ie make a mesh in blender and use a particle system to display and animate it.