[DrSpecter]

As far as I'm concerned, 2D is a back-stabbing industry where ass-kissing skills combined with the ability to produce predictably mediocre results on a deadline will get you "in". If you show them something their corporate clients wouldn't consider "cute" they won't return your calls. Those who have worked in the industry for a few years lose any sense of personal likes or dislikes outside of what is "marketable" according to corporate graphs. There's very little concern about originality or telling the story well-- which is the real art-form, if there still is one. So 3D just couldn't be much worse.

While purely hand-drawn 2D is already going the way of inking on cels, the ability to draw, and nail a few keys by hand will always be the foundation of animation. Where you take it from there will depend on the latest fads. As I said, right now Flash is probably the most dependable source of bread and butter income. But Maya is a high-dollar skill that's in demand. There's just a high learning curb on that one that makes me want to nail Flash a lot more solidly before taking it on.

But there's a kind of evolution a piece needs to go through that starts with thumbnails and storyboarding. Flipping between two keys is also pretty essential if you want the line of action to really pop in an appealing way. WHat happens a lot with CG stuff is "animation" gets defined as just moving something around on the screen, and all the steps required to bring it to life get skipped. The results are robotic and lifeless. But then a lot of clients might not know the difference. So you can learn how to use Maya and get work. But eventually that will be like building a house that suddenly starts to collapse and you have to frantically try to shovel a foundation underneath of it.

There's a John Lassiter story that might shed some light. He had studied classical animation at Cal Arts, then became interested in CG. So he goes to some computer animators meeting and shows them what he'd been doing. They were astonished at the life-like quality he'd gotten into his characters, and asked him what program he'd been using. It turned out he'd been using the same one as most of them, but he'd applied classical character animation techniques. And he'd started out on paper.