When I was learning MP programming I did something similar. Because in MP when an ent is created its action is running on server , you cant use the action on the clients. What I did :
Created a loop in main()
In this loop every 1 second it checks if an entity is still unanimated (created between the two checks). This is done by going thru all entities with ent_next and checking their 'am_i_animated' skill.
If it is , set its skill 'am_i_animated' to 1 and start a function
animate_me(entity)

Its very simple this way