The easies way to understand animating stopping an object is to remember that you are creating the illusion of energy. How to start it, make it flow or in this lesson, how to stop it.

Nothing in the world just stops! Even a car smashing into a brick wall has some movement or transfers it's energy into the other object. It the case of the truck smashing in to a wall the energy is absorbed by the bricks, smashing them into pieces and sending them into the air. Heck even a skydiver whose chute doesn't open still bounces on impact (boing noise here) with the ground.

Let's break it down. We are going to focus on the key frames of the animation cycle.

Frames 1-17 are the run cycle from lesson #2

Frame 18 Blinky pulls both feet up to make this look like a jumping stop. Both arms are in the back position.

Frame 19-21 His heels are digging hard into the ground and the body is leaning in a backward angle (we hold this pose for the 3 frames but move the eyes forward across the stage)

Frame 22 We've now dumped about half the energy from our run cycle but not all. We are in the middle of our stop. We are now moving into a motion that will seem like our character is "rocking" until all the energy is released.

Frame 23 Blinky begins to rock forward. His eyes are still in the full back position.

Frame 24-25 This is a full forward rock position, his arms swing forward for the first time.(we hold this pose for 2 frames)

Frame 26-27 Blinky is now rocking backward in an attempt to hold his footing0. The motion is only half as much as the forward motion because we have successfully dumped most of the energy from the stop. (we hold this pose for 2 frames)

Frame 28 full stop, Blinky iis standing upright. All energy from the run cycle is now dumped.

Frame 34 We start a simple turn forward. We lift one foot while the other is planted and move Blinky to a 3/4 pose

Frame 35 full front, Why didn't we dump the energy you ask? Because the movement was so miniscule the viewer won't notice we cheated a little. Ohh, now is a good time to mention you've got to know when to break the rules in life :)