Irrelevant of the setting or the story, or the fact that it's a preschool cartoon, I find that "Jake and the Neverland Pirates" from the Disney Junior channel is one of the best looking animations being currently broadcast on television.

The character animation in this product has the perfect balance between that modern skeletal deformation quality (that some cartoons make too much use of) and uniquely drawn frames. This leads to a remarkably smooth result.
The animators were also quite bold in making sure that heads and poses turn around a lot and convey depth and volume (especially of facial features).

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This is produced by Mercury Filmworks, of which other productions follow the same rich visuals.

I'll make sure to use this as reference when doing animation myself. If you know of other cartoons or products of animation that have this or better quality, make sure to share.

Huh, not to my taste. To me it seems like the ship is artificially 3D (can be seen right at the beginning) while the solid-color areas are incompatibly flat-looking because they don't have enough shading. The motion is smooth and expressive, I'll agree with that, though it's hard to appreciate when I dislike the style of the facial features.

I far prefer something like Log Horizon, and it's not even the most beautifully-animated anime out there, just the one I'm currently watching.

http://www.crunchyroll.com/log-horizon

It's certainly a stylised shading for the CG elements.
I think the purpose of this is to harmonize with the background art rather than the characters, as most of the CG in this show seems to be environmental objects like vehicles etc.

It's easier to visualize this when comparing the background art directly with the CG:

In any case, my original point was about the animation (motion).
To contrast with that Disney show, there's another show named "Stoked," by Fresh TV, which relies heavily on skeletal deformation.
In my opinion, this makes the visuals look too much like a cut-out, losing appeal. There are also fewer camera angles being used:

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I normally think of animation as being "the art of animation" including character design and color as well as motion. But it's true that the term animation refers to the motion as the identifying element. The motion is the hardest part to notice and remember though, at least for me personally. It's like how plot tends to be the invisible, taken-for-granted part of a story. I have great difficulty trying to cast my mind back over all the animation I've seen and pick out examples with good movement.

The motion is the hardest part to notice and remember though, at least for me personally.

If it's not something that I feel is particularly extraordinary, I also have trouble remembering.

One of the few examples that I do have from memory is the work of Sergio Pablos, who used to be an animator at Walt Disney Pictures.
An example of his work is the canine character "Dr. Delbert Doppler," from the Disney film "Treasure Planet" (2003).

There's a good sequence of this character at 02:35 in this video:

The examples that are particularly memorable to me usually end up being combat or dancing, though magic spell special effects can also have some great examples of movement. Actually, a good way to search for examples of animated series with good movement might be to look at music videos where someone has used a montage of combat or dance scenes from different series. Hmm maybe I will review my AMV collection and see if anything has particularly good movement...

The thing that bugs me about Disney-style animations is that they spend so many frames of animation on emotions and blending movement that the animation ends up feeling unnaturally slow. People shouldn't have to spend 750ms raising their eyebrows - it looks weird. To me it looks as if their characters are all taking strong depressants.

The thing that bugs me about Disney-style animations is that they spend so many frames of animation on emotions and blending movement that the animation ends up feeling unnaturally slow. People shouldn't have to spend 750ms raising their eyebrows - it looks weird. To me it looks as if their characters are all taking strong depressants.

I understand what you're saying, though I feel like some animated shows are not "slow" enough.
I quite treasure the slow moments, as they give the characters an organic or realistic quality, like they really need to think before acting, like the world that they live in is real and has consequences.

The opposite are those shows where the protagonist and others keep moving forward without showing reaction to the bad things that happen to them - to me, they feel artificial.

These slow and introspective moments are more easily found in anime shows rather than American cartoons, which may be part of the reason why anime has a bigger adult audience. I also find them on Disney and Pixar films.

Animation reached its peak in the Bugs Bunny/Road Runner era. It's been downhill ever since.

Samurai Jack may be a notable exception...