Did 3D Animation Kill 2D Animation? Why the Real Problem Isn't 3D

Why I still Love 2D Animation

For as long as I can remember, I've been fascinated by animation, and a lot of that interest came from watching reruns of older cartoons when I was growing up. I watched a lot of Tom and Jerry, Looney Tunes, Hanna-Barbera cartoons and other older animated shorts, and even though I didn't understand the technical side of animation at the time, there was something about the way those cartoons moved and the way the characters were drawn that always caught my attention.

I could watch the same episodes over and over again and still find something entertaining about them. Looking back now, I think a big part of what drew me to them was that they didn't seem limited by the rules of reality. Characters could stretch, squash, explode, fall apart, get flattened, or completely change shape for the sake of a joke, and somehow the animation still made all of it feel believable within the world that the animators had created.

There are specific cartoons and animated sequences from that time that have stayed with me for years. One Tom and Jerry short that I remember particularly well involved Jerry freezing, Tom getting locked out, and Jerry eventually ending up living inside a giant piece of Swiss cheese that had its own Swiss cheese furniture. It sounds ridiculous when I describe it now, but that kind of creativity is part of what made those cartoons so memorable to me. The animators could take an ordinary situation and turn it into something completely absurd without worrying about whether it made sense in the real world. Chuck Jones' work also had a major influence on me, especially because of the way he approached character acting, expressions, timing and comedy. The more I've learned about animation, the more I realize how much thought went into those seemingly simple cartoons that I watched as a kid.

Discovering Animation Beyond American Cartoons & More

I was also exposed to animation from other parts of the world at a relatively early age. During the 1990s, I would watch anime on Spanish-language television here in the U.S. and also when my family would visit relatives in Mexico. At that point, a lot of the anime that I was seeing hadn't really become mainstream in the United States yet, so it felt like I was discovering something that was very different from the American cartoons I was accustomed to watching.

As I got older, my interests expanded even further with more mature animations like Todd McFarlane's Spawn on HBO, and The Maxx on MTV. Anime had also finally begun to trickle into the States, culminating with network blocks like Toonami on Cartoon Network. It wasn't my first experience with anime, but Toonami had finally made it a little more accessible and allowed me to watch new visually interesting stuff daily.

Toonami had a great lineup of shows that resonate with me to this day, shows like Outlaw Star, Tenchi Muyo and especially Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team. All of those projects had their own visual styles, approaches to storytelling and ways of moving characters, and I think as I began to be exposed more and more to so many different types of animation it only helped push me further into why I became so interested and passionate about the medium.

Broken Promise (Dreams) 25th Anniversary | Toonami, © 2022 Adult Swim

Some of My Biggest Influences Were Stop Motion

Interestingly, some of the animation that influenced me the most wasn't even traditional 2D animation. Barry Purves' stop-motion film Rigoletto made a particularly strong impression on me when I first saw it one morning in some dingy hotel room on one of our family road trips. As did the animated sequence for Electric Light Orchestra's "Don't Walk Away" from Xanadu, animated and created by legends Don Bluth and Gary Goldman. There was something about seeing animation created through completely different processes that fascinated me. Instead of simply seeing drawings move across a screen, I was seeing physical objects, puppets and miniature environments being brought to life one frame at a time, and I think that helped shape the way I looked at animation long before I understood how difficult any of it actually was.

Will Vinton was another huge influence on me. I loved his work on Dinosaur!, I can remember renting this from Blockbuster when I was really young and being both fascinated yet terrified of the claymation dinosaurs for some reason. The Adventures of Mark Twain and the Wilshire Pig shorts were also some of Vinton's work I would consistently watch, for whatever reason, I was always fascinated by the look and movement of clay animation. There was something very physical about it that I found appealing. You could see the texture of the material and the imperfections in the characters, and you knew that someone had physically built the thing that you were watching and then moved it a tiny amount at a time to create the illusion of movement. That physical connection between the animator and the character was something I found really interesting, even if I couldn't have explained why when I was younger.

Ray Harryhausen also had a major influence on me. His stop-motion work, including the fairy-tale shorts he created earlier in his career such as The Story of Little Red Riding Hood and The Story of King Midas, were some of the things that really made me appreciate what stop motion could accomplish. I also loved George Pal's Puppetoons, including Tubby the Tuba. Looking back at all of these influences together, I think what stands out to me is how different they all were. Barry Purves, Will Vinton, Art Clokey, Ray Harryhausen, Chuck Jones and the people working on the cartoons and anime I watched weren't all trying to achieve the same visual result. They were using completely different techniques to create completely different experiences, and that variety is something that I think has always been important to me.

“The Story of King Midas” Stop Motion Short, © 1953 Ray Harryhausen

When 3D Animation Started Taking Over

During the late 1990s and early to mid-2000s, I started noticing that the animation industry was shifting more and more toward 3D. Pixar and DreamWorks were producing successful 3D animated features and companies like Mainframe Animation were working on things like Reboot, and Beast Wars. Traditional 2D animated movies were becoming less common.

At the same time, I was noticing that the film industry was becoming increasingly dependent on computer-generated effects and relying less on some of the practical techniques that had been used for decades. Miniatures, practical effects, matte paintings, animatronics and other physical techniques were still being used, but CGI seemed to be becoming the preferred solution for more and more things.

When I was younger, I was honestly pretty resentful about it. I didn't want to give 3D animation a chance because I felt like it was replacing something that I had grown up loving. From my perspective, it wasn't simply a new technology being introduced into the industry; it felt like an entire way of creating animation was being pushed aside in favor of something that I didn't connect with as much. As more and more 3D movies came out and fewer traditional animated features were being produced, it was easy for me to look at the situation and think that 3D animation was killing 2D animation.

I think my feelings were also influenced by the fact that a lot of the 3D animation I was seeing seemed to be moving toward similar character designs and visual styles. Obviously, there were exceptions, and there have always been 3D productions that looked unique, but during that period I felt like a lot of mainstream animation was becoming more uniform. Characters started falling into similar proportions and design patterns, and movies often seemed to have a similar overall look and feel. Compared with the huge variety of styles I had grown up watching, that was disappointing to me.

Now that I'm older and have spent more time actually studying animation and digital production, I don't think I would describe the situation quite that simply anymore. I still believe that the industry's transition toward 3D came with some real consequences for 2D animation, but I don't think 3D animation itself was responsible for everything that happened. There were economic, technological and industry-related reasons for the transition, and once 3D became successful and studios developed the infrastructure to produce it on a large scale, it was obviously going to become an increasingly important part of mainstream animation.

What I think We Lost

Even though my opinion of 3D has changed, I still think there are things that were lost when traditional animation became less prominent. The biggest one for me is variety. When I look at older animation, I see a huge range of different styles and approaches. Different studios and animators had their own ways of drawing characters, creating backgrounds, handling movement and designing scenes. Even when two projects were technically using the same basic form of 2D animation, they could look completely different from one another.

I also think we lost a certain amount of craftsmanship and knowledge when some of those traditional techniques stopped being used as frequently. There were people who spent their entire careers learning how to draw, paint, photograph and animate using processes that aren't as common today. When an industry moves away from a particular technique, fewer people have the opportunity to learn it, and eventually some of that knowledge becomes much harder to find. That doesn't mean the knowledge disappears completely, but it can become something that only a relatively small number of people understand firsthand.

For me, there is also something about the physical quality of traditional animation that I really miss. When you look at older hand-drawn animation, sometimes you can still see the pencil lines underneath the finished artwork. You can see subtle variations between drawings, and in some older productions you can even see the shadows and imperfections created by the layers of painted cels being placed on top of one another and photographed. Those things remind you that an actual person created every drawing and that the artwork physically existed before it became the finished animation.

I think that's part of what gives older animation its particular personality. It's not necessarily technically perfect, and that's exactly why I like it. The imperfections can become part of the character of the animation. When every line doesn't remain perfectly identical from frame to frame, it can make the artwork feel more alive. That doesn't mean digital animation can't have personality, because it absolutely can, but there is a quality to hand-drawn animation that I personally find very difficult to replicate.

“Don't Walk Away” sequence in Xanadu, © 1980 Don Bluth Productions

Learning 2D Animation Made Me Appreciate it Even More

One of the biggest things that has changed over the years isn't how I feel about traditional animation, but how much I understand and appreciate the work that goes into it. I have always loved 2D animation, but actually learning how to animate myself has given me a completely different appreciation for the amount of thought and work behind even a few seconds of movement.

When you're watching an old cartoon, it's easy to see the finished movement without thinking about everything that went into creating it. Once you start animating yourself, you begin to notice all of the decisions hidden inside those few seconds. You start thinking about the poses, the timing, the spacing, the weight and everything else that has to work together to make movement feel believable.

I really enjoy figuring out the key poses, but I think one of the most satisfying parts of animation for me is working out the in-betweens and figuring out the timing and spacing between the drawings. You can have two really good key poses, but if the spacing between them is wrong, the character can move too quickly, too slowly or simply feel like they're floating through the scene. Once you start getting the timing and spacing right, you can actually feel the movement begin to work, and that is one of the things I find most rewarding about the process.

I also really enjoy exaggerating acting, poses and facial expressions. Sometimes I'll record video reference of myself acting out a scene because I need to see how the movement actually works before I can figure out how I want to animate it. I'll look at the reference to understand the timing, the weight of the movement and how far I can push the pose while still keeping it believable. Being able to take something that happens in reality and exaggerate it without completely losing the sense that it could happen is one of the things that makes animation so much fun for me.

Learning to See Movement Differently

The more I learn, the more I've realized that understanding movement is important before you even start putting drawings down. You need to understand how gravity works, how force affects an object, how velocity changes movement and how different parts of the body react to one another. You need to understand what you're actually trying to animate before you can figure out how to exaggerate it.

When I think about the old animators I grew up watching, I have even more respect for them now because they must have spent an enormous amount of time observing how the world worked. They had to understand how people, animals and objects moved so that they could exaggerate those movements and still make them feel believable. A character might stretch to an absurd degree or move much faster than a real person could, but there is usually some underlying understanding of weight, timing and physics that keeps the action from feeling completely random.

That's something I didn't fully appreciate when I was younger because I was only seeing the finished cartoon. I already loved what I was watching, but I didn't understand everything that was happening behind the scenes to make it work. Now that I'm learning how difficult it is to make even a simple action feel right, I can look back at those older animations and appreciate them on a completely different level. Learning 2D animation didn't change my mind about why I loved it. If anything, it has made me appreciate it even more.

Animation Rough - Marshmallow Kun, © 2026 One Moment Productions

What Changed My Perspective on 3D Animation

For a long time, I saw 3D animation as the thing that was replacing something I loved. As more mainstream studios moved toward 3D and fewer traditional 2D animated films were being produced, it was easy for me to connect the two and blame 3D for what I felt was being lost.

When I was younger, I didn't really think about the people behind the animation or the reasons the industry was changing. I just saw more and more 3D movies being released while the kind of hand-drawn animation I loved seemed to be disappearing from mainstream theaters. From my perspective at the time, it felt like 3D and 2D were competing against each other, and if 3D continued becoming more successful, there would be less and less room for 2D. What eventually changed my perspective was learning more about animation and starting to understand the work that goes into making it.

The more I learned about animation, the more I realized that the fundamentals I was studying weren't exclusive to 2D. Timing, spacing, weight, acting and movement are important regardless of whether an animator is working with drawings, a puppet or a 3D model. The tools and processes might be different, but animators are still trying to solve many of the same problems: How does something move? How much weight does it have? How long should an action take? What pose best communicates what the character is feeling? That made it harder for me to simply dismiss 3D animation as something I didn't like.

I also started watching more 3D animated films and paying attention to what the artists were actually doing rather than immediately comparing everything to the 2D animation I grew up with. I started noticing the acting, timing, posing and movement behind the characters and realized that there was a lot of work and artistic skill involved in making 3D animation feel convincing and alive.

I still prefer 2D animation, and that hasn't changed. But I eventually realized that my frustration wasn't really with 3D animation itself or with the artists creating it. I was frustrated with the way the industry seemed to be moving toward one dominant approach while other techniques became less common. There is a difference between saying that I don't want 3D animation to exist and saying that I don't want 3D animation to become the only approach that studios are willing to invest in. When I was younger, I didn't really separate those two ideas. I saw 3D becoming more popular and assumed that 3D itself was the problem. Now I see it differently.

I can appreciate the work, skill and creativity that goes into 3D animation while still wishing there were more opportunities for traditional 2D animation. I can enjoy a 3D animated movie without feeling like I have to compare it to hand-drawn animation or choose one over the other.

My perspective changed because I stopped seeing 2D and 3D as enemies competing for the same space. I started seeing them as different tools with different strengths. I still love 2D animation for the same reasons I always have. What changed was that I eventually realized I didn't have to dislike 3D in order to continue loving it.

3D Title Sequence with 2D Animations, © 2022 One Moment Productions

When CGI Becomes a Crutch

This is where I still have some criticism of the industry. I think CGI and 3D have become so useful and so deeply integrated into modern filmmaking that there is sometimes a tendency to use them simply because they are available. If something would be difficult to build physically, it can be created digitally. If a miniature would take too much time to construct, it can be replaced with a digital environment. If a practical effect is complicated, it can be recreated with CGI.

There are obviously situations where that makes complete sense, and I'm not trying to argue that every movie should suddenly start building miniature cities instead of using digital environments. CGI can make things possible that would have been incredibly difficult or even impossible to accomplish using older techniques. The problem for me is when it stops being one option among many and becomes the automatic solution.

I think there is something lost when a technique is abandoned simply because a computer can technically accomplish the same result. Building a miniature, creating a matte painting, constructing a puppet or animatronic, or physically creating an environment can produce a different kind of result because the artists have to interact with something that physically exists. Those limitations can sometimes actually force more creativity.

The same thing applies to animation. If you can create something in 3D, that doesn't necessarily mean you should. If the story would benefit from hand-drawn animation, then 2D might be the better choice. If the physical qualities of stop motion are important to the feeling of a scene, then stop motion might be the better option. The fact that one technique is newer, more technologically advanced or more commonly used doesn't automatically make it the best choice.

Practical and Digital Don't Have to Compete

I've always been fascinated by stop motion partly because of how physical the process is. When you're animating a puppet, you have an actual object sitting in front of the camera. You physically move it a small amount, take a frame, move it again and repeat that process over and over. The final animation contains the results of all those physical decisions.

That's one of the reasons I still love the work of people like Will Vinton, Barry Purves and Ray Harryhausen. I also really appreciate Phil Tippett's stop-motion effects work, including his work on Robocop, and though I don't necessarily have the fortitude or the stomach fto watch his newer work,  "Mad God", more than once, I can still appreciate it for the brilliant and artistic piece of work it is. Even when a particular movie isn't necessarily something I personally enjoy, I can still appreciate the craftsmanship and technical skill involved in creating those effects.

I don't think that means practical effects are always better than CGI, though. There are plenty of things CGI can accomplish that practical effects simply can't do as efficiently or effectively. The same thing is true in the other direction. There are qualities that come from working with physical materials that are difficult to recreate digitally, just as there are things that digital tools can accomplish that would be extremely difficult to do physically.

That's why I think the two should be used together rather than treated as competing technologies. A filmmaker could build a miniature set and then use digital effects to expand it. An animator could create a 3D environment and combine it with hand-drawn characters. A live-action production could use practical creatures and then enhance them digitally. There are endless combinations if you stop thinking about these techniques as replacements for one another.

Scene from Mad God, © 2021 Shudder

Some Modern Animation Is Already Doing This

There are actually some modern examples that I think demonstrate this idea really well. Chowder is one of the shows that comes to mind because it was never particularly concerned with sticking to one technique. During its run on Cartoon Network, it could move between 2D animation, stop-motion-style sequences, claymation, puppets and other techniques. The show was willing to use whatever visual approach worked for the particular joke or scene.

At the time, I don't think I fully appreciated how unusual that was. Now that I'm studying animation, I appreciate it much more because it demonstrates that there isn't really a requirement for an animated show to be limited to one method of production.

Smiling Friends is another example that I think is even more extreme. When I first saw the character designs, I honestly didn't think I was going to like it. The designs looked strange to me and didn't immediately appeal to me, but after actually watching the show, I found it hilarious. What I also really appreciate is how much the show experiments with different techniques. It can use digital 2D animation, styles that imitate traditional cel animation, claymation, puppets, live action, and 3D animation, sometimes all within the same episode.

I think that kind of experimentation is really exciting because it reminds me of what I loved about animation when I was younger. It doesn't necessarily have to look like everything else. There can be different techniques, different styles and different visual languages, and they can all exist alongside one another.

Scene from "Smiling Friends" S1-E8, © 2022 Adult Swim & Man of Motion

2D Animation Isn't Dead

Despite everything I've said about the decline of traditional 2D animation in mainstream American filmmaking, I don't believe 2D animation is dead. There are still plenty of independent artists, studios and animators creating incredible 2D work, and the internet has made it much easier for those artists to find an audience without necessarily having to go through one of the major studios.

YouTube in particular has become a really interesting place for animation. I do remember a time before YouTube when the hotspot for independent and budding animators was a little site called Newgrounds, seems like an eternity ago now. I think Newgrounds is still a great place to additionally post your independent animation projects, but it feels like YouTube has really become the main hub for creatives at this point.

Regardless, independent animators can create shorts, series and other projects and put them directly in front of an audience, in multiple places and sites for others to discover, it's never been easier for independent artists to get their work out into the world and showcased. They don't necessarily need a major studio to decide that their style is commercially viable before they can make something. That doesn't mean independent animation has replaced the traditional industry, but it does give artists another avenue to create work that might not fit into the mainstream studio system.

I also think digital tools have created an interesting middle ground for 2D animation. Artists don't necessarily have to recreate the exact production process that existed decades ago in order to create work that has the visual qualities of traditional animation. Digital tools can make certain parts of the process faster while still allowing artists to draw frame by frame and retain a lot of the qualities that make 2D animation appealing.

For me, that's a much more interesting future than simply trying to bring back the past exactly as it was. I don't think we need to abandon modern technology to preserve traditional animation. I think we can take what was great about traditional techniques and combine it with what modern technology allows us to do.

What I Want to Learn as an Animator

That's also part of why I'm glad I'm learning animation now. I'm not trying to reject modern technology or become someone who refuses to use digital tools because I prefer traditional animation. I'm learning digital 2D animation, and I'm interested in understanding other areas of digital production as well. The more I learn, the more I realize that understanding the fundamentals is more important than being loyal to one particular piece of software or one particular production method.

Timing, spacing, acting, weight, physics, composition and storytelling are important regardless of whether you're drawing a character on paper, animating it digitally or moving a 3D model around in a virtual environment. The tools can change, but those fundamental principles don't suddenly stop applying.

That's probably one of the biggest things that has changed in my own thinking. When I was younger, I saw 2D and 3D as competing forms of animation and felt like one had to replace the other. Now I see them as different tools that can accomplish different things.

I still want to be able to draw. I still want to create 2D animation. I still want to understand stop motion and practical techniques, and I want to understand 3D well enough to know what it can do and when it makes sense to use it. I don't necessarily need to become an expert in every single technique, but I think having some understanding of all of them makes me a better artist because it gives me more choices when I'm trying to figure out how to approach a project.

Test Animation Scene, © 2024 One Moment Productions

So, Did 3D Kill 2D Animation?

If you had asked me this question when I was younger, I probably would have answered yes without much hesitation. I genuinely felt like 3D animation was replacing the animation I loved and that the industry was moving away from something that had a huge amount of artistic value. Now that I've gotten older and actually started learning animation myself, I think the answer is much more complicated.

I do think the success of 3D animation played the only role in the decline of traditional 2D animated features in the American mainstream. I do think the unfortunate reality is that the industry lost some jobs, knowledge, techniques, variety and artistic styles as a result, and I still wish traditional animation had remained a much larger part of mainstream filmmaking.

At the same time, I don't think 3D animation itself is the enemy, and I definitely don't think 3D artists are responsible for what happened. 3D is an incredibly powerful tool, and there are stories that benefit from it in ways that 2D animation simply can't replicate. The same thing is true in reverse. There are stories and styles where hand-drawn animation is going to be a better fit, just as there are projects where stop motion, practical effects or live action make more sense. The problem, in my opinion, is when we stop treating these things as choices.

The Tool Should Serve the Story

The more I learn about animation, design and creative work in general, the more I believe that the idea should come first and the tool should come second. Technology should help you create what you're trying to create, rather than determining what you're capable of creating.

If 3D is the right tool for a particular story, then use 3D. If the project would benefit from hand-drawn animation, then draw it. If stop motion gives the characters the physical quality they need, then build the characters and animate them one frame at a time. If practical effects will produce a better result, use practical effects. If the best solution is to combine several of these techniques, then combine them.

I think that's what makes the future of animation so interesting. We don't have to choose one medium and reject everything else. We have access to more tools than animators and filmmakers from previous generations ever had, and I think we should take advantage of that rather than allowing one particular technology to become the default answer for everything.

Looking back, I think my younger self was partly right about something, even if I was wrong about the cause. I was right to notice that something was being lost when traditional animation and practical techniques became less common. I was right to miss the variety, craftsmanship and personality that I associated with older animation. Where I was wrong was thinking that 3D itself was the problem.

Now I think the real problem is relying on any single technique too heavily.

Animation doesn't need to be one thing. It doesn't need to look a certain way because that's what is currently popular, and it doesn't need to choose between old technology and new technology. The best approach depends on the story, the characters, the style and what the artist is trying to accomplish.

That's the kind of animator I want to become. I want to understand enough about 2D, 3D, stop motion, compositing, illustration, design and other creative techniques that I can choose the right tool for whatever I'm trying to make instead of forcing every idea into the same process.

The Future of Animation Shouldn't Be About Choosing Sides

I still love the look and energy of hand-drawn animation. I still miss the days when you could see pencil lines and cel shadows and recognize the physical craftsmanship that went into creating an animated film. I still wish there were more mainstream 2D animated features and more opportunities for traditional animators to work in the industry. None of that has really changed.

What has changed is that I no longer feel like I have to hate 3D in order to love 2D.

I can appreciate what 3D does well while still believing that 2D, stop motion and practical techniques have something unique to offer. I can use modern digital tools while still appreciating the techniques that came before them. I can look at a 3D animated movie and enjoy it without feeling like I'm somehow betraying the animation I grew up loving.

Ultimately, I think that's what I want to see more of, not one technique replacing another, but artists having the freedom to use whatever combination of tools best serves the story they're trying to tell. If that means drawing every frame, building a miniature, creating a 3D environment, filming something practically, or combining all of those things together, I think that's a much more exciting future for animation than deciding that one method has to win.

The technology will continue to change, just as it always has. New tools will come along, old techniques will evolve, and some things that seem outdated today may eventually become popular again in a completely different form. As artists, I don't think our job is to reject those changes or blindly follow them. I think our job is to understand what the tools can do, understand what they can't do, and then decide for ourselves what will best bring an idea to life.

Scene From Fish & Chips Short, © 2024 One Moment Productions

What do you think? Did 3D animation kill 2D, or was the situation more complicated than that? Is there a style, technique or form of animation that you wish was still used more often? I'd genuinely like to hear what other animators and animation fans think. Leave a comment and let me know.