How do I make animations work when I press Q in ROBLOX player?

Well to start you need a local script. in this local script you will be able to press Q to punch, it will play the animation, and fire tuple arguments to the server to see if it should punch

The local script should be in StarterCharacterScripts, and should look something like this:

local UIS = game:GetService('UserInputService')
local RS = game:GetService('ReplicatedStorage')

local PunchEvent = RS:WaitForChild('PunchEvent')

local Punching = false
local Damaging = false

local Char = script.Parent
local Humanoid = Char.Humanoid
local RightHand = Char:WaitForChild('RightHand')

local PunchAnimation = Instance.new('Animation') -- define the animation instance, or make an animation instance

PunchAnimation.AnimationId = 'rbxassetid://67584958' -- if you have a new instance animation, make sure to set the right id

local Damage = 20 -- put damage here

UIS.InputBegan:connect(function(input)
    if input.KeyCode = Enum.KeyCode.Q then
        if not Punching then
            Punching = true
            Damaging = true
            local PunchTrack = Humanoid:LoadAnimation(PunchAnimation)
            PunchTrack:Play()
            PunchTrack.Stopped:wait()
            Punching = false
            Damaging = false
        end
    end
end)

RightHand.Touched:connect(function(hit)
    if hit.Parent:FindFirstChildOfClass('Humanoid') and Punching and Damaging then
        Damaging = false
        PunchEvent:FireServer(hit.Parent:FindFirstChildOfClass('Humanoid'), Damage)
    end
end)

now there should be an event in ReplicatedStorage and a server script in ServerScriptService. in this script should be something like this:

local PunchEvent = game:GetService('ReplicatedStorage'):WaitForChild('PunchEvent')

PunchEvent.OnServerEvent:connect(function(client, HumanoidToDamage, Damage)
    HumanoidToDamage:TakeDamage(Damage)
end)

this should allow for the animation to play, and the damage to be done