It's back to fundamentals. I watched one of the Animation Mentor webinars (it's free and for all, go check out resources section on "www.animationmentor.com") and I saw how they break everything down to the basics and build their animation on the top of it. In some of the most amazing and complex looking shots they used the same good old bouncing ball principle.
This one is an application of how variation in the pattern of movement, you can create a sense of "feeling" in the object.
