Bit of a late contribution to the thread, but here's my two cents on this.
Gabaghoul
|"At 19 years old I feel like I should be miles better than how I am now if I truly want to pursue this as a career"
You're early, actually. There have been plenty of folks in their 30s, 40s who made the animation/entertainment career transition after putting years or even decades into another life.
My advice for you going if you want to get into animation is to research what it is that a professional animator actually does and whether or not that's something you want to make a career out of.
Drawing itself is but one facet of working in a professional production. Matching IP styles, asset management, coordinating with other team members, meeting deadlines...
Remember that an animation job is still a job. There can be great joy in it, but it pays to have a realistic understanding of the demands of such a career.
Ross_R
|"Just draw what you want to draw?"
It's a balance.
Realistically, you should be balancing technical / fundamental studies with the things you want to draw. It creates a "gameplay loop".
- Draw what you want to draw
- Identify what you aren't satisfied with (ie. Drawing looks flat)
- Study and practice to resolve the unsatisfactory element (ie. Study form and perspective drawing)
- Draw what you want to draw, this time with the benefit of additional study experience
And such, the cycle repeats. It's like Dark Souls or Monster Hunter - you have an Aspiration (beat the boss), a Failure (get your shit kicked in), a Solution (learn boss patterns) and a Resolution (Beat the boss).
Bear in mind that the process is highly iterative - you'll likely only start seeing noticeable improvements several cycles in, which brings us to:
Lumeinshin
| "People say to try not to delete the stuff you do early on"
Since the process of troubleshooting, study and improvement art is so iterative, it can be hard to notice how you're improving bit by bit over time.
That's why you keep the stuff you do early on - so you have a reference point for how your work was back then versus how much better you've gotten now.
There will be days where you wake up and question if you've even improved at all after months or years of drawing.
By keeping your early work, you'll be able to compare and realize how far you've come since then - or alternatively identify areas where you may be stagnating.
Ross_R
| "Don't be too attached to your drawings, just get rid of them"
This becomes more relevant when it comes to doing artwork for a living, especially in a production / industry context such as TV animation or games.
As a professional artist, you'll have to come to terms with the fact that your artwork is ultimately expendable - projects get cancelled or experience shifts in direction all the time. A lot of artwork gets left on the cutting room floor.
Similarly, the realities of production deadlines means that you'll often have to set perfectionism aside. The world runs on "good enough", not "perfect".
As such, getting too attached to individual pieces of artwork can really start to take an emotional toll on you. Past a point, you start to realize that what you really should be cherishing isn't individual works, but the creative and production skillset you've been honing over the years. "Getting rid" of your old artwork is more of a figurative expression here - you still want to keep some for self-reference or to showcase past work experience - but the sentiment stands.
