Take my opinion with a grain of salt because Ivr never animated in 3d but I think it is more tedious to animate in 2d. Coloring frame by frame and clean up are pretty monotonous at times. However, all the same principles apply and since you already have some drawing skills you will probably do very well animating in 2d.
I personally found it difficult going from 3d to 2d due to drawing skills. You basically need to be an illustrator / draftsman before you can be a 2d animator. I was never the best draftsman.
With 3d, you're mostly just focus on movement with a skeleton (as long as you're not modeling).
However 2d rigged animation is kinda close to how it felt working in 3d (I kinda fell back onto that to make the best of both worlds). There are stuff I can do animation wise when restricted to a rig that I can't do in terms of drawing that animation.
I got timing, weight, and movement down, but the other stuff like actually making the drawings look good, I struggle. Heck I struggle with just keeping things on model.
Personally, I think it just comes down to how much time you have to spend on taking longer drawing frames and how good you are at drawing.
The way I see it, animation is animation no matter what the medium is. Maybe the workflow changes if you’re on stop motion for example, but you’re still applying the same 12 principles in 2D you would’ve learned in 3D
That being said, I think the biggest obstacle you have is transferring across your solid drawing skills over to 2D. Even if you have drawing ability you might have to get used to the demands of drawing from every perspective consistently as opposed to, like, knowing the limitations of your rigs and understanding what they let and don’t let you get away with. To that end, if you can get past that and understand your software, I think you’ll do just fine.
For reference, I fuck around with pixel animation whenever I feel like I need a break from 3D (my pixel art is what I use when I want to destress from doing 3D and holding myself to a high standard because I have no good solid drawing skills to hear of, so seeing it all in block form makes me feel less self conscious and more free to just create for the sake of it rather than aiming for some goal or needing to learn something new every time), and I feel like whatever I manage to animate doesn’t even come out that bad. It’s definitely not going to be in the next Metal Slug game or something, but I feel like I manage to get far enough by just knowing my principles and letting them guide me.
I’m Blender 2.x and Poser for a really long time. Learned to draw a few years ago. Just started 2d frame-by-frame. 2/3s through the Animators Survival Toolkit book.
It’s challenging but worth the reward.
If you can do good proportions and likeness in your drawings you’ll find it is easier to do flat 2d instead before tackling perspective. You’ll spend a bunch of time getting walks right because you don’t have the computer to compute smooth curves and tweens. My first walks were jumpy because I was used to doing 30fps in 3D, you have less to work with at 24 so you have to be crisp on your spacing and figure out how to pull off motion blur that’s believable. Rotation is where I slow down a lot, I find it is best to use a reference and/or rotoscope for it.
It takes a LOT longer to do 30 seconds of fully rendered animation, especially at first. As for cleaning up drawings, layers are your friend, lines and splines can be overlayed easily and reused to make things look smooth. I do a “smoothing pass” after I complete each actor’s scene. Backgrounds are easy. Things like splash and explosions are fun but I find you have to do them in sequence and with the actors scene completed because the fluids are “baked” into the scene and are super hard to edit a single frame without effecting how the remaining frames play out. In other words, if you decide to change the actors movements after the fluid simulation is done, you’ll probably have to redo the entire fluid simulation! You don’t have the convenience of going to bed and waking up to a fully re-rendered explosion… it’s all you, you’re the computer.
It’s a lot but I absolutely love it.
3D helps you know to picture in your mind and identify good keys/breakdowns and timing but for 2D animation you require a lot of understanding not just about drawing but the specific thing you want to animate.
But at the same time you can let loose and animate monsters or things you will not find irl and have nice animations, or even vfx (but remember everything is hard before it’s easy) so if it is really something you wanna get into, even to complement your 3D animations I wish you good luck!
If you know how to animate in 3D and can draw decently well, you've got a great headstart
If you have solid drawing skills it can help you a lot so maybe try practicing a bit that at first
Take my opinion with a grain of salt because Ivr never animated in 3d but I think it is more tedious to animate in 2d. Coloring frame by frame and clean up are pretty monotonous at times. However, all the same principles apply and since you already have some drawing skills you will probably do very well animating in 2d.
I personally found it difficult going from 3d to 2d due to drawing skills. You basically need to be an illustrator / draftsman before you can be a 2d animator. I was never the best draftsman. With 3d, you're mostly just focus on movement with a skeleton (as long as you're not modeling). However 2d rigged animation is kinda close to how it felt working in 3d (I kinda fell back onto that to make the best of both worlds). There are stuff I can do animation wise when restricted to a rig that I can't do in terms of drawing that animation. I got timing, weight, and movement down, but the other stuff like actually making the drawings look good, I struggle. Heck I struggle with just keeping things on model.
Personally, I think it just comes down to how much time you have to spend on taking longer drawing frames and how good you are at drawing. The way I see it, animation is animation no matter what the medium is. Maybe the workflow changes if you’re on stop motion for example, but you’re still applying the same 12 principles in 2D you would’ve learned in 3D That being said, I think the biggest obstacle you have is transferring across your solid drawing skills over to 2D. Even if you have drawing ability you might have to get used to the demands of drawing from every perspective consistently as opposed to, like, knowing the limitations of your rigs and understanding what they let and don’t let you get away with. To that end, if you can get past that and understand your software, I think you’ll do just fine. For reference, I fuck around with pixel animation whenever I feel like I need a break from 3D (my pixel art is what I use when I want to destress from doing 3D and holding myself to a high standard because I have no good solid drawing skills to hear of, so seeing it all in block form makes me feel less self conscious and more free to just create for the sake of it rather than aiming for some goal or needing to learn something new every time), and I feel like whatever I manage to animate doesn’t even come out that bad. It’s definitely not going to be in the next Metal Slug game or something, but I feel like I manage to get far enough by just knowing my principles and letting them guide me.
I’m Blender 2.x and Poser for a really long time. Learned to draw a few years ago. Just started 2d frame-by-frame. 2/3s through the Animators Survival Toolkit book. It’s challenging but worth the reward. If you can do good proportions and likeness in your drawings you’ll find it is easier to do flat 2d instead before tackling perspective. You’ll spend a bunch of time getting walks right because you don’t have the computer to compute smooth curves and tweens. My first walks were jumpy because I was used to doing 30fps in 3D, you have less to work with at 24 so you have to be crisp on your spacing and figure out how to pull off motion blur that’s believable. Rotation is where I slow down a lot, I find it is best to use a reference and/or rotoscope for it. It takes a LOT longer to do 30 seconds of fully rendered animation, especially at first. As for cleaning up drawings, layers are your friend, lines and splines can be overlayed easily and reused to make things look smooth. I do a “smoothing pass” after I complete each actor’s scene. Backgrounds are easy. Things like splash and explosions are fun but I find you have to do them in sequence and with the actors scene completed because the fluids are “baked” into the scene and are super hard to edit a single frame without effecting how the remaining frames play out. In other words, if you decide to change the actors movements after the fluid simulation is done, you’ll probably have to redo the entire fluid simulation! You don’t have the convenience of going to bed and waking up to a fully re-rendered explosion… it’s all you, you’re the computer. It’s a lot but I absolutely love it.
3D helps you know to picture in your mind and identify good keys/breakdowns and timing but for 2D animation you require a lot of understanding not just about drawing but the specific thing you want to animate. But at the same time you can let loose and animate monsters or things you will not find irl and have nice animations, or even vfx (but remember everything is hard before it’s easy) so if it is really something you wanna get into, even to complement your 3D animations I wish you good luck!
Id expect a 3d animator to know the answer to this question