Playing with the idea of using prerendered stories for my 2D MMO. There's currently no animation, and this seems to be the only practical way to do it (since your gear is shown on your character). That means rapidly learning enough about 3D modelling/animation.

And even then, it's not clear that it'll be practical:
16 frames × 32-bit bitmap × 10 animations × 108×108 pixels × 8 directions = 57MB of sprites in memory per on-screen character.