I somewhat agree on this..
My uncle, animator who onced work at the Philippine Animation Studios told me that a group of young bright and skilled "Flash Animators" are having a hard time animating a "snapping ribbon" fluidly.. because there is this scene where a runner/sprinter wins the race by snapping the ribbon first.
He did it by doing it traditionally (frame by frame) and translated it to something like GIF animation rather than using "tween" animation.. itwas from paper first before digitally porting it.. it was done in no time.
that is the importance of knowing the basics first before jumping into the advanced.. you sometimes miss the important ones. my uncle was a traditional animator since before jumping to digital.. unlike the digital animators of today who started doing digital without even starting traditionally.
He was my mentor and he worked on lots of stuffs we can see before and today (Aladdin Animated Series, Coco Crunch Commercials and recently the Nissin Cup Noodles Animated Commercial)
A lot of so-called "digital artists" miss this. The fluidity of motion and the freedom of form is seldom expressed fully digitally. Just because one can "draw" or "paint" with a wacom, it doesn't mean one can actually do it.
Nevertheless, it's a matter of application, but applying techniques is ONE-WAY. Traditional media artists can go digital easily, applying the techniques, whereas the same techniques used in digital cannot be applied to traditional media when one doesn't have the background because the discipline is somewhat different.
Again, digital media is EASY because it IS digital. Plain and simple.