Exaggeration

Realism in animation is a very skilful thing to have knowledge of, yet sometimes even when an animator has done extreme amounts of research they still cannot get the movement they want to achieve quite right. The area that will usually be at fault in this situation would be the exaggeration of the piece. Exaggeration is needed to add an extra edge to a movement to make it evermore unquestionably clear what movement, emotion, storyline etc. is trying to be shown to the audience. If a character was scared animate him so that his shivering appears to shake the screen, if they’re smart design him with huge glasses that make their eyes look ten times as big, if they’re angry paint their face bright red and have fire burning behind them in the background.
Some animators originally misunderstood the point of this technique and tended to take things a little too far and instead of thinking outside the box about other ideas that may enhance the animation the simply distorted the characters in question more or thought up ideas that were simply disturbing. ‘Disney’s dominance of the medium places the issue of “realism” at the centre of discussion of animation,’ (P. Wells, 2006 p.24.) The best way I have discovered of describing this technique is that it is a ‘caricature of realism’ (F. Thomas and O. Johnston, 1981 p.65/66) and in many ways it is. For in some situations as an animator you have to dive completely off the deep end and create something so maddeningly distorted and embellished in order to achieve exactly the right affect.