Well, obviously it's technically a lot more advanced. But when it doesn't try to mimic reality (Dreamworks stuff for example) the style strikes me as being fairly primitive. I don't see the loving attention to detail in the characters, movements, and environments that I do in the best hand-drawn stuff. When it tries to be realistic, it tends to suffer from the "uncanny valley" effect making it hard to appreciate.

When watching animation, I want things to not get more and more realistic, but more and more stylized. And I think it's a lot easier for artists to assert their own individual style in 2D than in 3D. Even more so when they don't have an automated process filling in the gaps incorrectly.

I don't know if it has been mentioned but I recently watched the original Heavy Metal again. Now that was 2D animation and A+ on the style because all the segments were done by different animators. Add that soundtrack it is a true gem,

ahem... (post 41) :)
the pentagon scene is definitely my favorite scene

Lilo and Stich is my favourite Disney animation ever.
Titan AE is my favourite feature length animation.

Lack of 2d traditional animation is not really bothering me as i do watch anime from time to time so the issue has no much impact one. I do have slight issue with every new cgi movie looking similar to other movies. If we take Frozen characters and put them in Despicable me movie they won't look out of place. that makes things a bit boring and less memorable.

Ugh Frozen. HOW DID THIS MOVIE BECAME SO SUCCESSFUL!!??

I was hoping after the failures of movies like Bolt, Meet the Robinson's, and Chicken Little. Princess and the Frog could have brought back 2D animation, but than it lost to Tangled. And now that Frozen made 1 billion dollars Disney will forever make 3D CGI cartoon movies forever :(

It is has been a long shit day which is no excuse but still, my apologies friend. :D At this point I may start repeating my own posts prefacing them with "Has anyone mentioned this yet?" :P

Whats your feeling on Flash Animation?

It can be a medium for smaller studios/independent people to work with. Again, the medium itself is not the main issue for me, but the content. I tend to watch films or series which prove interesting enough for me, and in the era of youtube, reviews and social media, it's easy to both find interesting stuff and avoid things you don't like. You're not stuck with a limited number of VHS tapes anymore.
That said, I only know those viral flash animations. Some of them are fun, and others are irritating. And that's ok, it's not a crime to have light entertainment every once in a while.

Some people have the wrong idea that 3D is an evollution of 2D, while actually, they are just totally different mediums and as such can´t be compared equally. One can´t be "better" than another just because one is 3d and the other is 2d. Just as with games.
I love 2d animation, I have probably seen every Disney thing under the sun when they used to do 2d for either cinema or tv, the first time I heard a computer was getting involved in an animated movie, must have been in "The Lion King" when they used it to drive the antilope trajectories during the stampede scene. And when they stopped doing animated movies, I turned my sight towards Japan.
There are a lot of awesome and plain ugly 2d animations, and awesome and plain ugly 3d ones from a technical point of view.
I recall watching "Beast Wars" in Cartoon Network, it was an example of the improvement 3d had. The first season had almost plain looking textures, harsh animations, simple backgrounds, etc. The second season, improved quite a bit and on the third one you had a total overhaul. I loved it since I love anything with robots, but, I would watch Gundam Wing and enjoy it as much.
Also when I watched "Ghost in the Shell" I was awed by the animation.
And then, there are the 2d/3d amalgamations like "アップルシード" which try to look 2d while being 3d, others that mix 2d with 3d elements and give it a 2d look that when done right blends in just nice.

But is that really possible? Maybe it is but I haven't yet seen a CGI movie that has reached such a level. If you take some of the greatest CGI animated movies like Toy Story, Finding Nemo or Fantastic Mr. Fox and compare them to some of the greatest 2D animated movies like Snow White, Pinocchio or Bambi , then I'm still seeing a decisive gap between the two groups in terms of artistry. Talking about visual artistic quality, the level of attention and subtlety everything is imbued with, shape design, characterization of form and movement and so on. Some CGI movies get surprisingly close in some moments but overall even the best CGI animated movies look and feel sterile and crude compared to the best 2D animated movies. It's not for a lack of talent working at the studios, but when you pan a camera around a 3D modeled character you can never achieve the same quality that you achieve if you draw and design (!) every single frame. The computer can inbetween faster than any human but the computer knows nothing about design, it just calculates. It should be painfully obvious that one can impossibly get the same results that way when compared to animating frame by frame by hand which is not a mechanical process but always involves human judgement. Even animators who don't draw the key frames need to be able to draw and design. Same goes for CGI rendered backgrounds vs 2D painted backgrounds, simply no comparison. 3D programs can render a scene most realistically but even the most advanced ray tracing tool knows nothing about design.
CGI tools make the process faster and easier but to achieve the same quality of movies like Snow White, Pinocchio and Bambi there are no shortcuts for some of the most crucial elements. It doesn't matter if you have the most expensive render farm in the world, if you want the same quality you're going to have to put in the same amount of human effort where it counts most. Now of course any of the purely mechanical tasks can be greatly sped up and done more cheaply and efficiently with modern equipment but the tasks involving design will still require the same amount of effort. For example, it's more time saving and therefor cheaper to do pencil tests with a digital drawing program plus tablet so you won't have to scan/photograph every single piece of paper but if you want Bambi quality, you're ultimately still going to have to draw everything 2D frame by frame by hand, whether you do it on paper or in a program.
As for traditionally painted 2D backgrounds vs 2D digitally painted backgrounds, still a huge difference. I went to see a big Kazuo Oga exhibit with all his background paintings for the Ghibli movies and such quality has so far not ever been achieved digitally, again not necessarily for lack of skill but because tablets/painting software are the limiting factor here. Naturally, not everyone can see the difference but it's decisive. As for digital 3D backgrounds, not even remotely there so no comparison.

In terms of story, both 2D and 3D movies can be equally entertaining, of course.

hehe no worries ofc :) Heavy Metal in any case deserves to be mentioned at least twice in any film animation thread :D

Heavy metal and Titan AE, damn i have to watch it again

I definitely miss it, but with Flash or Maya (3D) you have a far more efficient and cheaper ways to create animations.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsQrKZcYtqg - love that stretch and squash.

Oh my goodness, I go on little tangents about this sort of thing all the time. It's not that I don't like some CG movies, but I really, really like this sort of animation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCXVfJou7pg
Admittedly, it's mostly rotoscoping and rudimentary CG (if memory serves) but it's still awesome.