Could this have been done with a 3d reference?

mayo said:
Could this have been done with a 3d reference?

Definitely. They obviously had to make the 3D camera movement first, and for that they need 3D models to plot out where the camera is pointing. For the animator not to use those models as a base for the main poses would be silly, unless whoever did the scene took it up as a challenge of sorts, but that would be silly as well.

To anyone removing unconfirmed animator tags - please add 'artist unknown' back, and remove 'presumed' if necessary. It's a mess other people have to fix otherwise.

Really depends, some japanese animators can do it without an animatic.