Looking for something to pad out this month's post count on JSVB, I chose this sketch. In animation, this emotional-looking reaction to a stimulus, sudden and violent, is called a "wild take".
A "take" is just a normal reaction to something surprising: an eyeblink and a change in expression. A "double-take" is an eyeblink, a look away, and then a look towards with a stronger expression. A "wild take" is an extreme physical response to the surprise.
The lesson here is that you can't go too far stretching out a pose, almost. The tendency is to keep poses conservative. While it is possible to create a pose that's so far out it's unrecognizeable, most of the time animators will tend to under-dramatize the pose.
By today's post-Ren & Stimpy standards, this pose could stand more exaggeration.
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