I personally love the work behind Zodiac Orcanon Odyssey Zodiac Orcanon Odyssey, extended Spine showreel. - YouTube
Also a lot of the work posted in the Showcase section is really outstanding and I spent quite some time staring at it.

I know @Nate takes inspiration from Ubisoft's recent 2D work.
Rayman Legends is a particularly good example of skeletal, flexible character animation, if you haven't tried it.
The other UbiArt titles (Child of Light and Valiant Hearts) weren't as impressive in terms of character animation, but still look visually charming.

The technical animation work done in Ori and the Blind Forest is also really good, but it's all pre-rendered 2D and 3D-pseudo-2D stuff.

Personally, I give the crown of pixel graphics to Fez. The world is really rich with keep-alive.

(also a fan of sotn and Vanillaware's animation. Muramasa is a great example of 2D-skeletal-meets-classic-sprite-structure. Dragon's Crown is very much of a technical mystery to me in terms of workflow.)

Pharan wrote

I know @Nate takes inspiration from Ubisoft's recent 2D work.
Rayman Legends is a particularly good example of skeletal, flexible character animation, if you haven't tried it.
The other UbiArt titles (Child of Light and Valiant Hearts) weren't as impressive in terms of character animation, but still look visually charming.

The technical animation work done in Ori and the Blind Forest is also really good, but it's all pre-rendered 2D and 3D-pseudo-2D stuff.

Actually, Ori is a 3D model, rendered to sprites. Aurora from Child of Light is also a 3D model. It's funny that you mention all the above games since I wrote about most of them in my thesis related to animation

There was no technical artist on Ori, the animator himself used a standard CAT-rig in 3DSmax as he did not know how to rig If you want to know more about that, think the animator's name is James Benson and he has a GDC talk online in the GDC vault you can watch for free

You'd also be surprised to learn that Rayman Legends is mostly 2D, but also has a few 3D objects. The long snake boss is 3D!

As for myself, love Ori, ofcourse, Rayman and Spryke (this game is still in development but the animations are so complex and cool) and not to forget... Cuphead (animated on paper entirely, you can find Jake Clark's GDC talk in the vault as well)!

Ori was a 3D model pre-rendered as 2D sprites. I saw the GDC video.

Pharan wrote

Ori was a 3D model pre-rendered as 2D sprites. I saw the GDC video.

That's what I said?

Yup she said that. :nod:
By the way Nyenna I'd love to read your thesis!

Also yeah, Child of Light's protagonist was 3D but the other characters weren't.
A choice I didn't fully appreciate honestly, although I understand why they chose to do so.

Erikari wrote

Yup she said that. :nod:
By the way Nyenna I'd love to read your thesis!

Also yeah, Child of Light's protagonist was 3D but the other characters weren't.
A choice I didn't fully appreciate honestly, although I understand why they chose to do so.

Yeah, they used fluid hair physics afaik, think that was the main reason for it (besides the animation transitions I think). I wonder if they couldnt have achieved that in 2D though. I know you can do some real complex node based rigging in Toonboom Harmony so it wouldnt be entirely impossible.

As for my thesis, a couple of people have expressed their interest in reading it.. (idk why, it's about 60 pages by now :x)
So I decided I will translate it to English when I'm graduated (give or take 3-4 weeks from now!)

Yeah, but Ori was a 3D model, pre-rendered as 2D sprites.

lol. I kid.

I played Child of Light a bit close to launch. Her hair kept bugging out and disappearing every few times I switched rooms. It was really weird. I think they eventually fixed that bug though.
I didn't particularly enjoy the animation work they did on that game. The style was charming but the movements were borderline amateurish.