@acai It looks as if your prefab GameObject does not contain the SkeletonAnimation at the top, but as a child. We can't say for sure since you haven't shared any screenshots or description of what your actual prefab setup looks like. In general it would help a lot if you could describe everything in as much detail as possible, for example "However, neither the prefab nor the prefab instance seem to work." does not describe what the actual problem is you encountered: were you unable to assign the reference, or could you assign it but nothing was playing, or were you receiving error log messages, etc.
The referenced URL lists e.g. the following code modifications:
var skeletonAnimation = (playerData as GameObject).GetComponent<SkeletonAnimation> ();
Did you debug the code and set breakpoints there? Were any references found and assigned as they should be, or was everything set to null?
