@Riot: Is there a reason you prefer doing 3D animation over 2D?

Because if I am brutally honest here, the latest we got about our two new lovebirds, while it was quite pretty and also badass, in terms of raw animation it was not exactly "the yellow of the egg", as the phrase in my country goes. (Oh shit, an unpopular opinion, here come the downvotes). Yeah obviously there is MUCH worse out there, and given that Riot has a number of professionals working on those shorts will make sure that there is at least a minimum quality that can be at least called "decent". However, such films will not be measured how "decently" they were made, but instead of if it truly reached the potential it had in terms of aesthetics and overall beauty.

As a matter of fact, 3D animation takes longer, is more expensive, and takes a lot more ressources in general. And I'd personally would prefer more stuff like that, but I'd always take a super-stunningly and truly, truly outragous 2D animation over a decently made 3D work. Mostly, because when it comes to 2D art, Riot's artists have displayed some SERIOUS talent, what we can see regulary with champion/skin-splash-arts and the like. So seeing all this beauty potentially going amiss in a style of animation that might not grasp the full potential and beauty of the subject... it just feels like there was so much more that could have been done with it.

I think the hardest it was visible during the Star Guardian release. The 2D artworks about the "backstory" of the team were quite beautiful, but that skin-promoting video had this horrid 3D animation... all made worse by the fact that the Magical Girl genre is deeply tied to a specific tradition in animation and style, and now instead of a true hommage to the concept, it felt like a cheap commercialized rippoff... So much beauty wasted for this weird preference for 3D animation.

I'm not saying all 3D is bad and Riot should never attempt any of it ever again. Heavens no, I'd be the last person to block out a potentially awesome source of content, and sometimes they really pump out awesome stuff like the Warwick teaser (seriously man that one was awesome, made me wish for a Bioshock-like game in a Zaun-setting). However, if you have a 2D animation with the same time and ressources as the 3D and both videos have the same lenght and equally talented people working on them, the 2D will ALWAYS look more stunning and impressive, mostly because the decreased overall workload on the basics allows for more polish and detail, as well as for fine-tuning stuff like light, shadows, and colors.

Riots strongest points are in their art and their writing, however both could be so much better used in 2D animation.

Especially when at some point you want to make shorts with actually relevant dialogue and you also have to animate mimic and the person speaking. So when you look at it this way, 2D animation would be the most logical way to go, and yet there appears to be this weird fixation on 3D. I am not sure if this is an cultural thing with american entertainment culture in general, or just the preference of the creators at Riot, and I kinda hoped that someome could answer that question to me.

(Also this question is slightly motivated by the fact that I'd love to see an animated League series based on lore. Seriously, how awesome would that be?)