I've been trying to make 3D rendered sprites that look like hand-drawn 2D sprites for a while. I finally got this result which I'm pretty happy with:
![](http://puu.sh/mtOhI/22a59d0f7d.gif)
the model which I made in MakeHuman because I don't want to waste my time modeling and rigging a generic human:
![](http://puu.sh/mtOjY/a25c3de092.png)
What's going on is I'm multiplying these different maps together in the compositor:
Depth:
![](http://puu.sh/mtOz3/bfab3b500f.png)
AO:
![](http://puu.sh/mtOz8/defc054e2d.png)
Lighting: (dot product from the normal map)
![](http://puu.sh/mtOzb/8adc834830.png)
It's basically being shaded completely in the compositor.