Animation synchronization in multiplayer setting

I have successfully completed a few tutorials on multiplayer and now have a stupid little sandbox with a server and a client. They update regularly and thus I can see their movement and rotation with the simple use of the networkview, but I can't understand how to syncrhonize animations, since the official third person multiplayer tutorial is somewhat advanced for me.

Can anybody explain what's the principle behind the "others" animations? I mean in single player, my animations are crossfaded and played by the input manager, and so I guess that I need to create a "similar" script that, instead of receiving keypresses receives something else (seen messages somewhere)? But how would those messages be synchronized to the other characters?