[Answered] How can you set an animation to run based on certain functions or key presses?

I’m currently trying to create a 2D platformer game as a first project, but I’m having some trouble with the animating. I have a sprite created, and I have the actual animation; when I press Play on the Unity console, the player starts the running animation, and I can move around just fine. However, I would like to set it up so that on start, the player doesn’t move, and will only animate when walking left or right. I will include my script so far, but if anyone needs to know any other information, feel free to ask. I will willingly provide screenshots, data, files, etc. to help.

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;

public class NewMovement : MonoBehaviour {

	public Rigidbody2D rb;
	public float moveSpeed;
	public float jumpPower;

	private bool faceLeft = false;
	private bool moving = false;

	void Start () {
		gameObject.GetComponent<Rigidbody2D> ();
		faceLeft = false;
                  //I'm fairly certain that a bunch of the code has to be put in Start, so info is retrieved from the get-go.
	}

	void Movement() 
	{ 

		Vector2 v =  GetComponent<Rigidbody2D>().velocity;
		if (Input.GetKey ("d")) 
		{
			v.x = moveSpeed;
			GetComponent<Rigidbody2D>().velocity = v;
			moving = true;
		}
//Boolean values should be based off of the keys D and A; the sprite should only animate when one of those keys are pressed.
		else if (Input.GetKey ("a")) 
		{
			v.x = moveSpeed * -1.0f;
			GetComponent<Rigidbody2D>().velocity = v;
			moving = true;
		}

		else {
			v.x = 0.0f;
			GetComponent<Rigidbody2D>().velocity = v;
		}

		if (gameObject.transform.position.y <= -4.5) {
			if (Input.GetKeyDown ("w")) {
				v.y = jumpPower;
				GetComponent<Rigidbody2D> ().velocity = v;
			}
		}
	}

	void SpriteFlip ()
	{

		Vector2 face = GetComponent<Transform>().transform.localScale;

		if (Input.GetKeyDown ("a")) {
			if (!faceLeft){

				face.x *= -1;
				faceLeft = true;
				GetComponent<Transform>().transform.localScale = face;
			}
		}

		if (Input.GetKeyDown ("d")) {

			if (faceLeft){

				face.x *= -1;
				faceLeft = false;
				GetComponent<Transform>().transform.localScale = face;
			}
		}
	}

	void Animate()
	{
            //This is where the code will go for the animating, I hope.
	}


	void Update () 
	{
		Movement ();
		SpriteFlip ();
		Animate ();
	}
}

It looks to me like the Learn tutorials are pretty helpful right here:

This one shows how you set variables for triggering animations in the Animator component. Further tutorials int he series will cover how to trigger these from input.

my approach would be using Animator component and just playing animations by animator.Play(“aniatorStateName”)