Thanks for the ideas, they really helped me get a bit more of a grasp of the way to go about it for my case.
I think I’ll program the gameplay logic first. (I.E, tracking mouse movement, getting the controls down, determining hits and damage, etc.) Then implement the animations.
Since I didn’t know where to start, I was kind of trying to do everything at once, which resulted in both the animations and programming being confused, messy compromises.