Character animation like in Rain World

Hi, I’m an aspiring developer. Very inspired by the Rain World game, specifically the procedural animation of the Slugcat character. The character of the game looks like it is not a 2D sprite, but a 3D object, because in some moments you can see how the character can rotate his head (see the gif image).
How do you create such animation?
Is it a smooth change of many sprites drawn in different angles, or a full-fledged 3D model of the character, on which lies a pixel shader?
I would be grateful for any help.

9699716--1384781--BAiX.gif

I mean it’s probably described in this video:

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