https://www.artofthetitle.com/title/kung-fu-panda/

James Baxter tackled the animation in unique ways: in one shot he would hand-draw the animation completely from start to finish, and in another he would do just a few drawings that were then manipulated in After Effects. In addition, all the effects animation consisted of traditional hand-drawn effects as well as digitally-manipulated elements from the original Photoshop files.

gammaton32 said:
https://www.artofthetitle.com/title/kung-fu-panda/

I never knew he did ALL the animation here. I assumed the motion tweened assets were done by someone else and James just did the hand drawn stuff

I'll be honest. With how impossibly smooth his work is, I thought this whole scene was hand drawn. Now I see where he used rigs. I assume he also used this method for the opening scene from The Croods.

id kill for a 2d animated kung fu panda movie. also the mix of rigged animation and traditional makes a weird yet pleasant look

redpruple said:
id kill for a 2d animated kung fu panda movie. also the mix of rigged animation and traditional makes a weird yet pleasant look

Unfortunately, the time of 2d Dreamworks movies (and frankly any high profile animation studio) is long gone. Because of movies like Prince of Persia and Princess and the Frog flopping at the box office, even though they were an aesthetically great movies, studios opted for Computer generated animated movies, because consumers, which consists of mostly kids, would enjoy them more, increasing sales. Same reason why after Princess and the Frog came out, Disney closed their last 2D animating studio.