Character Emotion

I'm currently working on my 4th years honours project within computer arts. I'm looking into character emotion, and how to get the best emotional response from characters within narrative; I'm reading through a good book called Stop Staring... and looks like its going to be a huge help for my project. I will keep you posted on how I progress.. but I feel that acting for animaters is the very key to releasing emotion... which also helps to keep characters look realistic within a virtual environemnt. All the disney character many of us have grown with over the years all had characteristics that made them unique and I think you could only imagine the acting reference they went through, to get to the final character animation. Do you think that the priciples of 2D animation are lacking within 3D animation? and why do you think this is? Anu feedback would be great, as I could use it within my project research.