TAMAJOSHI'S PROFILE

Hello everyone! First post here so apologies if I did this wrong somehow.

I'm trying to make a battle system visually similar to a game called Darkest Dungeon. In the game, you have a typical turn based battle screen. When you select 'Attack', for example, instead of the battler animating, the game runs an event that dims the whole battlefield. A more detailed still image of the attacker and the enemy slide across the screen toward each other, almost like a comic book style "clash".

My goal is to have some sort of common event or variable to verify who the current attacker and defender(s) is/are and what skill is currently being used. I want to create an if/else statement to cycle to the image that represents the correct attacker and defender, as well as recognize the skill being used. That's at least the way I've imagined it could be done. I know next to nothing about javascript so I tried searching for something that already existed with no luck and I'm open to other ideas.

I currently am using the Yanfly Battle Engine Core and the Action Sequence Packs to call a common event when the player chooses the 'Attack' command to display the image through Show Picture. I don't know how to have it log who the active actor and defender is so I can have a variable show the appropriate image. There's a lot on checking actors I found out there but nothing I could find talked about checking the ACTIVE actor taking their turn.

Before basic attack:


During attack phase: