And your facial expressions (well, those of your chars) are a highlight.
Oh, you should see first of all MY facial expressions!
...
Especially when I get so much positive feedback!
Please, don't get me wrong now, because, seeing it like an outsider, as a whole it still looks like a game done in the early 2000s. That has nothing to do with your knowledge or your lack thereof, but with the models and textures you use, maybe also something with Cheetah. If you would use Unreal, for example, there would be a whole plethora of free models on professional level (and stuff like metahuman, free for use with unreal), etc. Your skills are developed enough to produce something on a higher visual level, it's the same techniques you use now, not even much to learn. As I said, don't get me wrong, because this paragraph is certainly more of a compliment than anything else.
I understand very well what you mean. And I have to admit that I definitely often take a look at other programs. Blender would of course be an option with a lot more possibilities, but first of all I don't feel like it (plus I really love Cheetah) and secondly I would need a new Mac with a new operating system for that. I'm still working on two Mac Minis with Yosemite and Sierra (for different reasons). And they only run outdated versions that are additionally buggy. Similarly with other applications like Quixel Mixer. And of course, I also noticed Metahuman. It looks amazing! But I've been bothered so much with things that don't work that I thought I'd stick with the things that work well for now, and learn and practice with those things, at least until I will/can afford a new computer.
Also, I'd like to do more cartoony animations next. The characters to match would be less realistic anyway. But I'm afraid I'd have to create them myself, and all my homemade characters so far have been a disaster to animate. I also don't like rigging much (understatement), and I'm especially afraid of the face, particularly the mouth/pharynx.
In short, I need to give some more thought to how I'm going to proceed.
By the way, the only way to get over your insecurity would be to create a small tutorial how you animate those facial expressions in Cheetah. Because, in the end, in 3d, there isn't really a proper way to do things "correctly". There are some rules coming from the experience of a lot of people (like using quads for modeling) because they are time proven, but they are no laws. You don't have to adhere to them and it doesn't matter if your methods sometimes differ from such rules as long as they work. Obviously they do, and any tutorial from someone who knows his stuff (and here you certainly do) is a good thing. A reason to avoid doing it, is of course the time factor. A good tutorial is a lot of work, don't underestimate it, but if the insecurity is the only thing holding you back, you certainly should do it.
Thanks for your motivation! Yes, insecurity is the main reason, but not the only one. I actually wouldn't know what to say about it other than: I move my controllers, I set keyframes, and render/change until I'm satisfied.
The problem is, I've never been good at teaching or explaining anything to other people. (You can also see it very nicely in the responses to my answers here on the forum. The most common ones are: "I don't understand what you mean"
). Of course that shouldn't stop me and I would really love to help other users. But I guess I'm just not the type for that. I don't like that, to show others my way of working. I know it's not nice, but it's always been horrible for me, for example, when trainees at my job wanted to watch me work. I would always like to have told them, "Go far away and look somewhere else!" I'm afraid I really did tell them something like that at times.
Time is also a reason, of course. I already hardly find the time to do what I want to do. But I'm always happy to answer questions, of course. And nevertheless I will think about it. Maybe I can get myself to do a very small tutorial at some point.
And at this point a huge THANKS to everyone here who makes tutorials and has helped me so much with it!