It's been a long time since I've posted, but I've been really delving deep into animation technique - trying to take my stuff to the next level. One thing that I find difficult is "subtle" animation - when there's not a lot of movement going on, and a character may be doing a great deal of acting while generally staying in one pose. In my searches, I found a great article by John K (Ren & Stimpy). Here's a snippet to think about:

"Subtle" is a very misunderstood word today. Most people think it means the lack of anything happening-and they think that's good. It actually means that lots of things are happening but they are happening not blatantly obviously and they are conveying meaning even though each individual subtle move is hard to detect.

I'll keep posting as I find out more.