how to make character perform idle, walk etc

hello

as a new user to unity 2.6.1 - 2 days :-)) i have read various tuts regarding the various components etc of unity but 1 area i am having trouble with is characters and more precisely, making them walk, idle etc. what i have achieved so far is to create an idle character which i am using at the moment to walk. what i am i am failing to see is how to have the idle character when there is no movement and another character when it walks. creating the animation characters in 3ds max is no problem. one for idle and one for walk. i also notice that in order to tag a character (idle, walk etc) it has to be in the hierarchy which automatically puts it on the stage as appears when the game starts. i have posted my script for the movement and would be grateful if someone could show me how to progress with this. many thanks.

var speed = 3.0;
    var rotateSpeed = 3.0;
    function Update ()
        {
            var controller : CharacterController = GetComponent(CharacterController);
            transform.Rotate(0, Input.GetAxis ("Horizontal") * rotateSpeed, 0);
            var forward = transform.TransformDirection(Vector3.forward);
            var curSpeed = speed * Input.GetAxis ("Vertical");
            controller.SimpleMove(forward * curSpeed);
        }
    @script RequireComponent(CharacterController)