They say at the bottom of the cartoonbrew article: "Most of the animation was done digitally on TVPaint." http://www.tvpaint.com/ Which looks a lot like toonboom
I dont think this is entirely hand drawn. There is defienatly some CG in there. Im even more convinced after reading this: "Sergio Pablos will talk about SPA Studios’ accomplishments and goals, explaining how a small studio from Spain manages to originate a hugely successful franchise like "Despicable Me" and how it…
"Convincing 2d that looks like 3d.... Wow" The name Sergio Pablos stuck in my mind after seeing his character Dr. Doppler from the film Treasure Planet (Disney, 2003). It's some very fluid animation. He was the supervisor for that character, that you can see at 2:33 here: http://youtu.be/sTa-8RzsAbg
The lines are absolutely hand drawn. It's possible that, per shot, they made a library of shapes that are hand painted (think Rayman Legends), and they morphed these shapes per frame to the match the motion and laid them under the lines. The frames are far too smooth for each frame to be hand painted and rendered. There's…