Creating a convincing fall and recovery takes more than just dropping a character. In this tutorial, Animation Mentor Alum Justin Milgate walks through his entire creative process, from establishing context and gathering reference to blocking, refining, and polishing a dynamic action sequence in Maya.
Establishing Context and Reference
Justin begins by emphasizing the importance of understanding why the character is falling. Rather than animating a generic tumble, he brainstorms scenarios. In this case, he settles on a distracted traveler on a moving airport sidewalk who loses their balance as the surface transitions to regular pavement.
He films himself acting out the motion, taking care not to actually fall. He also gathers online reference of people losing balance, comparing how far they can go before they cannot recover. This dual approach gives him both personal kinesthetic understanding and visual inspiration.
Planning and Compositing
Justin’s planning phase includes several key decisions:
- Show the character losing balance gradually over the shot
- Include a spine reversal to highlight stylized realism rather than cartoony exaggeration
- Create contrast by keeping the fall relatively brief, then showing extended time for recovery and settling
- Use basic set pieces like a moving sidewalk and suitcase prop to establish context
- Adjust rig settings to avoid gimbal lock and counter-animation, such as turning off follow align on the neck and head
Setting Up the Scene in Maya
Justin makes strategic rig adjustments before animating. He adjusts pole vectors on legs to follow the feet rather than the root, uses IK hands for easier constraint and solid contact with the suitcase, and sets up a reference video in SyncSketch with timestamped notes for quick comparison during the animation process.
Blocking with Story Poses
Rather than jumping into full blocking, Justin starts with broad story poses that show the major beats of the action. He creates about five key moments showing the character moving from walking, to losing balance, to catching himself, to recovering. This gives him a compositional roadmap and rough timing before adding detail.
Adding Breakdowns and Building Fluidity
In the next pass, Justin adds breakdowns between story poses to describe how the character moves through space. He creates a breakdown between the falling and foot-plant moments, favoring the falling pose to emphasize the struggle to maintain balance. He checks the silhouette from multiple angles in 3D space, not just the camera view, ensuring the action reads clearly from all directions.
Justin emphasizes that working in 3D space and checking Z-axis rotation helps catch issues that might not be obvious in the main camera view. Small adjustments in rotation or translation can significantly improve the feeling of losing and regaining balance.
Refining with Stepped Blocking
Once he completes the full blocking pass in stepped keys, Justin switches to spline mode. The arcs and breakdowns he created now protect the animation’s foundation. He cleans up curves in the graph editor, adjusting tangent points to build texture and timing. For example, he might move a key point to favor a previous pose, creating subtle drag and overlap that makes the recovery feel more organic.
Polishing and Making Revisions
In his first spline pass, Justin notices the moving sidewalk’s speed feels rushed compared to the fall action. He decides to slow down the beginning walk to create better contrast with the quick recovery moment. He also refines the ending, adding two distinct settle moments where the character catches himself and then looks at his suitcase.
Throughout this refinement phase, he continues making small adjustments while keeping the larger beats intact. This “big to small” approach ensures the overall action works before spending time on fine details.
Key Takeaways
- Start with context and reference to ground your animation in reality
- Create story poses first to establish the big beats and composition
- Add breakdowns gradually, building in overlap, drag, and lead and follow
- Check your work from multiple angles and in 3D space, not just camera view
- Refine curves in the graph editor with intention, favoring poses that build the narrative
- Use contrast in timing and action to make key moments stand out
- Embrace the “big to small” approach, ensuring larger beats work before polishing details
Justin’s philosophy emphasizes that animation is a process of building from broad strokes to refined details, always keeping the story and emotion at the center.
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