Animating custom NPCs?

I would like NPCs in my map, but I have a feeling it's not as simple as putting in a npc_citizen and hope for the best.
I think the logical approach woild be to have an animated prop_dynamic substitute as an NPC. Problem is the characters I want to use does not have the animations I need.

I was wondering if it is possible to use SFM and Crowbar to add custom animations to models downloaded elsewhere. If so, is thre a tutorial for it?

Thanks.

I'm still trying to work it out, while I've done a bit with Blender before I'm not a natural with it. Hopefully I'll find it as easy as how I use Crowbar to retexture things.



It's things like this I wish there was a simple tool for.
As in I save a .dmx on SFM, open a simple program like VTFEdit where you can import or "drag 'n drop" the .dmx to and it will simply do the rest for you without the need of Blender and it will spit it out as a .smd thats automatically alligned the bones, animation sequence and the like.

Thanks again for showing me how to do it.

It was a bit of a hassle what with passing it through Blender (that and for some reason the animation was on it's side and had to orientate it in prop_dynamic properties) but it wasn't as difficult as I thought it was going to be.

Though I may do the animation sequence again given it doesn't loop as smooth as I hoped.