Combining 2D and 3D

I have done several pictures over the past few years combining 2D drawings with 3D objects.  Two of them have involved drawing characters, scanning them and then importing the drawings into Bryce to give the appearance of a toon character against a realistic backdrop.  Another two have involved putting a 2D character into a frame with 3D-shaded objects.  The results have been variable.  The Bryce imports do not work so well as the shading of the 2D characters is flat, where it really needs to have shadows and highlights (in Roger Rabbit rather than Cool World style).  Over the weekend I got my Wacom tablet out of storage, having decided to have another go with it.  I have never really got on with the tablet as it feels hard to control compared to the smoother process of drawing on paper.  (There are probably much better tablets out there but I have always been unwilling to take a leap into a higher price bracket until I've had a go with the product first.)

At present I am working on a picture that illustrates the Bible verse "if I ascend into Heaven You are there".  The picture is of my armadillo character looking down on the Earth from space while tethered to a space shuttle.  I used my tablet to give the armadillo a bit of shading, and the results are (so far) promising.  I have imported the character into Bryce and am in the process of adding Planet Earth and the space shuttle into the frame.

The high water mark for this sort of thing is the work of Jay Piscopo, a very talented artist (and really nice guy) who posted a series of pictures on Renderosity a while ago.  He had set up pictures using Poser figures imported into Bryce with props and scenery of his own making, and had then drawn over the Poser figures using Flash to produce a style of picture reminiscent of Hanna Barbera cartoons.  He made the combination of 2D and 3D work very well.