The Lion King

Though not 3d, The Lion King is an animated feature that does extremely good character animation. The cast is all animals, rather than human, but it is hard to get reference for an animal acting the way you want to or expressing emotion the way you want to - that's why human acting is applied to the animal characters. Despite having different bodies, this still works extremely well, and helps to add a lot of personality to the animals.

Scar from the lion king is one of my favorite animated performances - he is the sort of character that, if you watched the film silent, you would still be able to understand and feel what sort of personality he has. The exaggerated head and facial movements serve to show his emotions well, but almost always slow enough to show that he is in control of those emotions and is intending to show them. His facial expressions really help to show when he is more smug or sinister, and it is almost easy to forget that he is a lion when you compare them to a human's expressions - they are captured so well, and really help you to show everything that Scar is thinking. In the above video it is so obvious how Scar thinks he is above everyone from the way he looks at them and the way he moves as if he owns the place. It gives a sense of his self importance, even against a character he should respect.

This can be applied to inanimate objects as well - for example, in the film Cars, the cars are somewhat alive and express themselves like human beings. This makes them more relatable and understandable as characters. Through both the body language that we come to associate with human and the car designs - whether they are more round and friendly, or angular and serious, we can see the personality of the car without having to rely on the visual clues we are used to. Squash and stretch are used even more in this film, with a lack of limbs and comparable body parts to animate, so the car body itself has to show much of the actio.