Fall down and get up

A small wrong-way stumble, then a hard fall that swings the body almost flat with a little bounce on landing, a beat lying there, and a two-stage climb back up to standing.

A cartoon person and a dog, both fallen flat on their backs mid-pratfall.

Use it in a cartoonOpen it in the block editorThe pack file (JSON)

What it is for

Fall down and get up is a comic pratfall: a stumble, a hard fall flat onto the back, a beat lying there, then a two-stage climb back to standing. It takes a little under two seconds in total and needs no other move before or after it — it starts and ends standing.

The principle it shows: anticipation

Before the big fall — the body swinging almost flat, the arms thrown wide, a small bounce in its height on landing — there is a small opposite stumble first: the body tips back only 10° over 0.18 seconds, the wrong way, before the real fall sends it swinging 84° the other way. That little wrong-way beat is what tells the audience a fall is coming, rather than the character simply keeling over.

The program, line by line

when it starts
  glide rot -10, right arm 70, left arm -70 over 0.18 s (out)
  glide rot 84, dy 28, right arm 150, left arm -150, right leg 10, left leg -10 over 0.32 s (in)
  glide sy 0.92 over 0.06 s
  glide sy 1 over 0.08 s
  wait 0.6 s
  glide rot 30, dy 16, right arm 60, left arm -60, right leg 30, right shin 40 over 0.35 s (out)
  glide rot 0, dy 0, right arm 0, left arm 0, right leg 0, left leg 0, right shin 0 over 0.35 s

Try this

  1. Stretch the opening stumble to half a second instead of 0.18. The wind-up to the fall is much more telegraphed, giving the audience longer to see it coming.

    In the program: ramp · over 0.18 → 0.5

  2. Lie flat on the ground for 1.5 seconds instead of 0.6. The character stays down much longer, which plays as more dazed or more comic, depending on what follows.

    In the program: wait · s 0.6 → 1.5

How it differs from Duck and Twirl

Duck is a quick, controlled drop that pops straight back up; this move is a full, uncontrolled fall with a landing bounce and a hold flat on the ground before a slower climb up. Twirl is the other move here that takes the body right off its feet, though by turning rather than falling.

Works on

Worked out by the build: it plays the move in the engine on each body and checks what moves on screen. Nobody types this table.
BodyMoves?What moves
2 legs (a person)yeswhole body, arms, legs
4 legs (a dog)yeswhole body, front legs, back legs
no legs (the monster with no legs)yeswhole body, arms

c4c:beh:fall_get_up · version 1.0.0 · c4c-free · by Jabbertoon