How to play animation in unity 5.0.0

hello, I am new to unity, my game has many characters and for that I’ve to make animations. I was doing this using animator. Can I make clips and add it to the character, will it work like above, as animator does? I tried to use animation.Play(“animationName”); and mark animationName as Legacy, still it does not play the animationName. I am using unity 5.0.0. Thanks for any help.

Is animationName a string variable or is the use of animationName a placeholder in the question?

If it does refer to a string, the " either side will cause it to look for an animation named animationName, rather than what value is store within animationName.