Hello! I believe you have answered this or someone on the Lackadaisy team has answered this question before (I just don’t remember the answer clearly or where it was answered), but what was the reason behind the creative decision to have certain things in the Lackadaisy pilot be in 3D?
It was a practical decision. We had limited time, limited budget, and a desire not to torture our animation + cleanup teams with having to hand draw complex hard-edged objects in correct perspective, as they translate, rotate and scale within a scene, frame by frame.
It's a method with a lot of precedence, going back long before digital 3d art began intermingling in animation production pipelines. Back in the day, animators would rotoscope footage of scale models and maquettes to achieve consistent form and perspective for certain types of complex objects. Cruella de Vil's car in 101 Dalmations is one well known example. The antlers on the Great Prince of the Forest in Bambi are another.
Now, of course, it's much more common to utilize 3d models with shaders applied that help the model blend with the style of the 2d animation.
[Image ID: A low poly render of Sphex, an anthropomorphic great golden digger wasp, wearing a black crop sweater, light blue pants, and black heeled boots, and placed on a brown background with a white outline around her /End IDs.]
Introducing Sphex! I think I'm getting a handle on designing new characters in 3D
This is so cool! I love that there's so many projects releasing OPEN SOURCE 3d models of specimens, such as this project I've talked about before that adds hundreds of 3d models of freshwater mussel shells to an open source library as obtaining real specimen shells can be extremely difficult (and to be trained as a mycologist you need to be able to touch and examine the shells due to how difficult it is to identify mussels in the first place). These models can also be 3d printed. I am unsure if the vertebrate models can be as well.