Interesting! Yes, I've not seen many comics try a full jump into animation, though I've known some try and incorporate effectively animated panels. I tried doing semi-animated sections back when I was releasing episodes of
Forgefyre, but that project petered out a bit. I guess Homestuck is a classic for animations in-comic as well, a lot of their biggest moments like
Cascade switched to full animation.
And yes, I think a lot of the old circles for these things have broken up a bit (and indeed I think it's harder to launch new webcomics than it used to be, by far). Checking my usual comics Gunnerkrigg Court doesn't really have an obvious links section, nor does OOTS (which used to have some collaboration with Erfworld before they shut down permanently and pulled all their content from the web). Girl Genius on the other hand does have a ring of other comics at the bottom which seems to be a connection to other comics connected to
Hiveworks, which seems to be an independent service provide for professional and semi-professional indie comics, I've not really noticed it previously.