Game Programmer want to get into game asset creation, need some advice.

Hello everyone! hope you all having a good day :) 


let me introduce myself

I am a 25 years old self taught game designer and programmer from Tunisia,  CG industry is still not fully born yet here which mean finding a good school/university to learn the fundamentals is not an option, for the past 5 years i've been working as a unity mobile game programmer for various clients across the world, this is my latest project, am programmer, game designer, and you can say art "director" (the artists obviously get the majority of the credit but i played a good role in reaching the final result) :


Anyway, 

As much as i like programming a game prototype using few basic shapes, this is the original prototype i made (in ~6 hours) for the game in the gif above :

But i really want to be able to create my own game art, but most importantly since i was a kid i was always amazed by animation, playing with toys and just makeup those silly stories around them and bringing them to life was always one of my favorite way to have a good time aside of playing videogames, so my main goal when i joing CGcookie is to become an animator, more specifically a "cartoon feels" animator, something along the style of Super Mario Odyssey would be my ultimate goal!

So i just joined CGcookie for 4 months and really crossing my fingers to see what i can do by the end of this year, with that said, what do you guys advice me to do ?? 


Knowing that i am not a complete noob in blneder, i've already made some modeling : 

(all of these has been done without following a step-by-step  tutorial)


So i know the basics of 3D modeling, texturing, rendering and a little bit of rigging, i have no problem at all navigating Blender's interface, however what i have never done in Blender is Animation, and my main concern is, should i go ahead with that now (Animation Bootcamp) or do i have to work more on my modeling skills ?

Thank you and have a great day :)