Good Day All,
At 69 years old, I have decided I want to learn how to be a 3D computer-based animator for fun and profit! My current plan is to first learn/develop my basic animation skills in 2D via Cartoon Animator 4 and then migrate onward to 3D via Iclone. Before I spend any serious money (defined by me as anything over $100 bucks) on developing my 2d animation skills, I've become conflicted. Is the best path to becoming a viable 3D animator to go through the 2D "curriculum" first? Or would I be better-served diving straight into the 3D Iclone pool? Any advice from folks that know much more about computer-based animation than I do?
Thanks in advance for your input!

As a 72-year old long-time iClone user, I would recommend concentrating on 3D if that is where you want to go.

I have great respect for 2D animators, but I have no feel for it. I like to be able to "move around" in my scene, quickly looking at different camera angles, including opposite ones. It's closer to live filmmaking with lights, camera, action.

---

2D and 3D authoring these days is basically the same. The only difference being the look and feel of your characters and rendering. Old school hand drawn animations has gone the way of the Dodo. Pick which feel and look you want to go for and go with it. 2D would be a little faster at rendering and playing as generally there are not as many colours and special fx (steam, fog, fire, rain etc) in 2D.

I agree with Animagic. I am also a long-time user of iclone. I will be hitting my 70th BD the end of the year.  I originally started off with Crazytalk for fun. But one day, I thought that I would try purchase a copy of iclone (version 4 at the time.
Once I started experimenting with iclone, basically I forgot all about Crazytalk. And I have been focusing on iclone ever since. Beside, you can do some cartoon shading in iclone. 

I'm a longtime iClone user who temporarily dropped it because I wasn't getting the desired visual quality for my custom characters.
I turned to Cartoon Animator because there I had complete graphic control.
Believe me when I say that was a big mistake.
Cartoon Animator is years and years and years behind iClone in functionality AND ease of use, especially if you want to make human animation.
Perfect rigging is automatically provided in iClone/Character Creator, but in CA you have to meticulously rig the cutout characters for yourself in a graphics program.
Modifying a character in iClone is done with sliders and loading simple bitmaps.
Modifying a character in Cartoon Animation is a complicated PITA.
Once you have rigged 3 views of your CA character, you are still limited in what you can animate. People gush over the ability to import 3D motions for these 2D characters but the limitations on what you can do are enormous, and you have to manually tweak layer overlap. In iClone, on the other hand, you get things like perspective handled automatically.
I returned to iClone/CC and found they had matured to give me the visual quality I was always looking for.
And I didn't have to give up my commitment to cel-style animation!



Animating now to life itself --Walt Whitman 

General Picture Animation brings up an important point and that is that with iClone you have far more control over the final result. You can create a 2D look as he demonstrates, but you can also go more realistic.

I have a long-term project that I at some point started to create a graphic novel version of, so I was looking for a more "toon"-like appearance that would still be fairly realistic. I render in iClone and then post-process in Photoshop. I recently went back to that idea, and the current iteration of that look is something like this:





These are actually stills from the animated version of the project. For things like particles as in the first example you need iClone's playback.

---

Great advice and input folks. I truly appreciate you taking the time and effort to offer your experience. I'd especially like to acknowledge the feedback from the "mature" respondents - not only did you provide me your advice, you let me know I'm not the only senior playing in the uniquely exciting animation sandbox! Methinks, I am going to refocus my efforts on Iclone. Thanks for helping me re-target my time and attention to the target I really had in mind! 

I like both programs.
To share on websites eg your own website or your customers websites or twitter etc. The works you will do with Cartoon Animator may look better and are easier to work with. Especially if you want to produce banners or work on a gif, CA is the perfect choice for this.
You can animate any picture.
It's also pretty cool if you want to make 2D cartoons.

3D is good if you want to make slightly more realistic images or more detailed animations.
You have already seen the work done with 3D. It depends on what you want.

For example, I made a cover study with 3D programs.
But I didn't like the intensity and I did it again with CA and it stopped perfectly.
Because it was not suitable for the area where I would put the picture.
I decided to use whatever I needed at the time.

CA4 is easier to learn than iClone.
Even Photoshop alone can suffice as a utility.
There is more to learn for iClone and you may need to learn extra programs.

In terms of cost, you may have to spend much more with iClone.

So be prepared for some things before you start :)

For some, it may be a matter of need.
You may need to use Photoshop while doing a study.
But there is another job, you may need to use Adobe illustrator. These should be considered as programs that serve different purposes.

However, if you have to make a choice, of course, I recommend giving priority to 3D.

I'm not giving up on both :)


----------------------------------------------------------------
https://www.youtube.com/yepkoo
https://dev.epicgames.com/community/profile/bxvo/Yepkoo#learning