I'd love to use a few animation replacers, since the vanilla ones are so ugly. The running, jumping and weapons swing animations for example. Is there a good list of these types of mods, and a guide to using them? From what I gather, it's a little bit more complicated than using other mods.

I would appreciate one too. I also see that there is this new animation compilation mod from Kamikaze, which I want to try out. Also, I've never been able to correctly install the DMC Stylish animations either.

For DMC stylish, use OBMM. I cannot explain it, but it only worked for me when I installed it that way. Even if I installed it correctly manually.
And I too, would love a list. Would be awesome, especially for Kamikaze's new mod.

Well filter animations on Nexus brought it to a mere 17 pages - not hard to go through at all.,

I just reviewed them all last night.