Three words: "Animator's Survival Kit".

There is a well known and studied process for 'bringing characters to life', even at the minimalist motion stage.  This aforementioned book is practically a bible on the process from a professional animator.

It's all about 'believability'.  Humans expect a particular degree of animous so that the figure doesn't appear to be a frozen image.  Anime has explored this to a great degree (both good and bad) to reduce the amount of animation while maintaining this animous.  Some 70's animated cartoons pushed it quite to the extreme and breeched the divide to the point where the corruption of believability is evident and some laugh at the 'cheapness' of the production.  In other words, you can only minimize the animous so much before you are doing nothing more than comic book still boxes that belay the concept of animation in the production.

The crucial revelation is that 'humans' (and this could be caricature animals or sponges) have automatic systems that are always in play.  Breathing, eye-blinking, nostril breathing flair, mouth twinges, body balancing, and so on are what are called "Autonomic" - not under direct conscious control.  These neural systems do the background tasks we are mostly unaware of.  But we are usually 'aware' of them (to some degree) in other beings.  It is easy to tell that a taxodermic display is not a real live animal (as good as the depictions are) because the brain eventually realizes that the dead, stuffed animal is doing nothing - at all.  Very few animals do not exhibit autonomic processes (but there are those that do at certain times - insects are good at this).

Basically, anthropomorphic characters (those mimicking human traits) should have the same animous - the same motive quirks and traits that would suggest a living being (possibly with a conscious brain) is being portrayed.  Of course, certain situations can play upon the antithesis - think of someone in contemplation in a 'zen state' (legs crossed, head down in meditation).  The animous there is so subdued as to be insignificant - and that is probably the impetus for the scene.  How much animous - how much activity or dynamics is shown in an animated sequence is just as important as the animous itself.

C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot. C++ makes it harder, but when you do, you blow your whole leg off.

 -- Bjarne Stroustrup

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