So I have been very inspired by "Ori and the Blind Forest" from Microsoft and Moon studios. The characters have been created in 3D and rendered as beautiful 2D sprites. This beginner tutorial looks at how you can take your 3D characters and render them as 2D sprites for use in Unity 5.
If you'd like to see more on this let me know! I'd love to do an entire project using this workflow.
Don't forget to check out this awesome GDC Vault Video with speaker "James benson": http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1021791/...