Hybrid Animation

Hybrid 2D with 3D animation have been offten used since discovered the capabilities of 3D. Slowly, in small steps, was introduced more and more computers to traditional animation. Examples are:

 The Iron Giant

Mulan

Treasure Planet

For my animation I decided to use a mixed technique. Closer to me is the 3D world, but few times I've done some 2d animation so I know what I can achieve in every technique.

My 3d model for my animation

We have to ask ourselves, in our animation, what is easy to do in 2D and what is easy to do in 3D. For me, it is better to do 3d model and animate it, and the background will be in 2d. Something that has more details is easier to do in 3D, static things or which contains a few lines are easier to manipulate in 2d.
There are other questions:

• are there technical challenges,
• what will be the best media for our film,
• what style is the best to tell the story and if we can achieve that style with 2d/3d?

In my opinion you should have knowledge about 2d and 3d separately otherwise you will spend time to learn new things. Of course it is positive to improve knowledge but what if you have close deadline of your project? There is no time.

When we want to achieve some effect or style, we have to experiment and keep our researches. The great combination of 2d and 3d is "The Paperman" the last Disney's short animation. You can check on interenet how they first built everything in 3 dimension and later, using special program, they painted stuff directly on CG.

The Paperman

For everybody I recommend the book:

Focal Press

This is a very interesting book that can help us solve our problems with the film, can improve our animation and even has a few tricks.

The book is perfect for everyone regardless you have made ​​a hybrid animation or not. As the author says, you have to do a research and the research should be an inspiration.