bejeweled_sky: Here's something you might find useful, an example of masterful direction outside of films:

Genndy Tartakovsky's animated series Primal.

There is something in the history of "Film Language" known as Pure Cinema, the original visual language intuited and codified in Silent Movies, which had to portray all of their emotional and narrative intentions without words.

Writer-Director Tartakovsky wanted to do this in an animated series, which would be set in a world before spoken language, but which still found a way to illustrate all the big universal feelings (and thoughts) at the wellspring of sentience: Fear, repulsion, longing/desire, love, hatred, joy, hunger, loyalty, wonder, satiation, hope/hopelessness, puzzlement, fatigue, inspiration, etc. etc.

So he set his story in a fantasy prehistoric world with a proto-human as the protagonist (hence the double meaning of the title, Primal). It's very impressive; and the "simplified"/artistically-heightened facial expressions might be useful for your clients.