Animations Failing To Play

This week we were working on getting the player to play a death animation and then respawn at the bed at the farm. 

At first we tried playing the animation via a Dynamic Montage slot but for some reason the Anim Notify was not firing. From what I could tell, all the blending and what not prior to the slot was interfering with the overall animation, preventing the Anim Notify from being reached towards the end of the death animation. 

By creating a State Machine solely for the death animation, I was able to get the animation to play correctly. 

(Above: The state machine overall, Below: Inside the Dead state)

After that it was just a matter of turning the IsDead bool true or false. The best part is the way in which the Player Character and its ABP are written, the player character will return to life on respawn without having to manually change the IsDead bool back to true. 

(Above: Dying to a Stone Enemy, Below: Respawning at the temporary bed on the Farm)