Did they reuse the pandaren model for the new mage spell animations?

[lockybalboa]

Does seem to be really similar

[BlueJayBlue]

The model?

Or the skeleton?

In either situation, no. The model is obviously different. Pandaren are big round bear people. Humans are not.

As far as the skeleton goes, you can't just take the animations of model A and apply them to model B. You'll end up with an eldritch abomination, because the two are rigged for two different things.

Same with just models. The result would look like




TL;DR: No, they didn't.