Pausing Gameplay to Display GIF, Then Resume Gameplay

I have an interest in making this happen in a game I'm building. Basically what would happen is the player selects a magic attack. This action would pause all the gameplay to display a quick animation, and then resume the gameplay with the attack inflicting damage. This is something that's similarly done in Japanese 2D RPGS (Project X Zone, Super Robot Wars).

If anyone has a tutorial (Video/Step by Step), or just any notes about accomplishing this then any help would be appreciated. Thanks, and thank you for creating this game engine.

Use the System Set Time Scale and set it to 0. Then use the System Set Object time scale on whatever you don't want to be paused and set it to 1.0. It overides Set Time scale for individual objects. Then return the System Time Scale to 1.0