Spline: Another method of starting out is skipping the stepped keyframes entirely and having smooth movement from the very beginning, where focus on the overall movement of the body and don't worry about the poses yet. 

Spline gives the possibility to work more straight ahead and feel how animation is going to look already in the early stages of blocking. Skip the painful process of getting used to looking at simplified stepped movement, only to hit the hard reality of the ugly "first spline" phase later.

If the movement doesn’t feel right, it is easy to shift individual keyframes around until get what are looking for. 

1 - Forward Contact Point

The contact position is the start and end-point of movement. Wherever character’s front foot hits the ground, that’s forward contact point.

Character should be positioned with their back foot on the ground and their front leg extended in a walking motion. The front foot should be hovering just above the ground, as if about to land. Keep some natural bend in the leg and consider how character’s weight, mood or pace might affect their movement ahead of the next step.

2 - First Passing Pose

The passing pose is the moment one leg passes the other. Here, the front foot is on the ground, while the back foot is raised striding forwards. It should be a reverse of forward contact point, as character shifts their weight into the opposite leg ahead of moving onwards. 

3 - Back Contact Pose

At this point, the position of character’s legs should have reversed. Now the back leg is planted firmly on the ground, out in front. The front leg, meanwhile, is raised off the ground, towards the back of the body. 

4 - Second Passing Pose

The initial cycle completes as character transitions into the second passing pose. Here, the original front foot moves back to the front. The original back foot returns to the rear. The two legs crossover, ending in the same place as the sketch in step one began. 

Splining is a 3D animation term12. It refers to the process of converting the interpolation of the keys from stepped to spline. This means that the computer connects the movement between each of your poses, making the movement look smoother.

Splining animations are created by placing one or more keyframes on a timeline, then connecting them with spline curves.

The number of control points in these curves determines how smooth or jagged your final animation will be.

Pantomime is a participatory form of theatre, in which the audience is encouraged and expected to sing along with certain parts of the music and shout out phrases to the performers. 

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I want to create an animation where a person is pushing something hard, but cannot push it, and finally stumbles.