2D Vs 3D characters

[TrickWithAKnife]

I don't think many of us here have the skills of Monty Oum, or the resources of Rooster Teeth. It would be lovely to put out something of that quality, but what a workload.

[SundownKid]

I think animated 3D characters are just fine (see also: Phoenix Wright Dual Destinies and Virtue's Last Reward). It's when the characters are un-animated that the drawn art style becomes better looking. It just communicates a lot more detail and a motionless 3D character hits the uncanny valley a bit. For example, the 3D rendered characters in Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon look (IMO) a lot worse than the ones in Fire Emblem Awakening which went back to a drawn art style.

3D backgrounds I would give more leeway. But it needs a certain amount of detail to look good in a visual novel vs. a video game.

[Faze]

3D animation is getting better and better. To make something like roosterteeth, it's...not impossible, even on free software, but it takes some time and I honestly just don't think it's worth it. I might end up doing 3D characters eventually, just not now. Not worth the time and effort for a dubious result, in my opinion.

I think 3D backgrounds though, can look...mostly fine, and I personally find them much, much more fun to work with/on than 2D backgrounds. This is especially true if you are going with a more "game-y" route with your game. Here's an example(work in progress) that I'm working on:

Still shot:
http://iforce.co.nz/i/nbrl5prx.b2h.png

Very badly optimized with bad lighting setup in motion:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdFEbHkfz_4

I think the still shot looks pretty decent, despite being totally 3d. The badly optimized 3D video could look better(I just tackled a directional light on it for testing and didn't bother with the spec maps) but I think it's enough of a "proof of concept" in that cartoony looking backgrounds can look decent. Then again, going from proof of concept to an actual application is difficult if only in terms of time management.

As far as character animation goes, here's a quick low poly cartoon shaded Vegeta, from Dragonball Z:

http://iforce.co.nz/i/lep45wy3.f0l.bmp

This took me about...20 minutes to make? I don't know. Obviously the lighting setup is not ideal, but you can get the idea of a more cartoonish look to it. He has no image textures, just materials. It was done using Blender, a free 3D software. With a few more hours I could probably make him look better, animate him and all. It's definitely doable to have a cartoonish look with 3D animation, it's just that for certain things it's a bit like "...But is it really worth the extra effort?"

None of the examples I posted here are particularly brilliant examples of 3D work, but I'm just trying to get across the idea that the technology is there and it's not completely impossible for a single person to do it.