Yes I have noticed that the modern day animations are 3D, most of the one I've seen in recent years seem to favor mostly the Toy Story style 3D characters. I like the look of those too, but as you mentioned,  it seems in order to get those characters perfected and realistic, the Disneys and Pixars are using all that super high end CG software, which would undoubtedly make their jobs easier and faster. I'm not really after that high end perfection, but I suppose there are advantages to working with 3D.

Forgot to post this earlier.....This short video lists the top 10 comic book making software........
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T7RhFGjfnI

DeathMetalDesk, I did look into that Pencil software, This video I found a few days ago shows five free drawing/anime softwares, and Pencil is demonstrated as well in this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJVQ5owmInA  Looks like they dropped the project, and in time, some others picked up where they left off. I wasn't sure if I should download it, because the only version available that I found is the newest beta, so I wasn't sure if it would work as well as the original. Do you have the original, or did you download the new beta version?