2D Sprite animation, while rotating in isometric view?

I am using Unity 2DToolkit for sprite management. I have managed to get this isometric image rotating in my game via frames:

My question is, now I want to give him a shooting animation, and it needs to be able to shoot WHILE rotating as well…my question is how will I do this?

The only way I see viable is that for every frame he is moving/looking there needs to be a shooting animation in that direction? So if he is looking at 1 degree or 26 degree, there needs to be a rendered shooting animation in that direction?

Would this be a bad way to solve the problem? Is there a better way? Would so many images lag the game down on iPhone?

Wont 8 directions mean a more choopy image when rotating?