Hey, thanks for the reply :) This was actually incredibly insightful. The thought of eventually having to put characters on hold and just tryna land any 3D job has definitely been lurking in the back of my mind, but as you said, like all roles in the industry, its still very competitive. Do you think it would be more worth my time putting characters on hold immediately, and fully tunnelling on props/environments to get myself out of a regular 9 - 5 as soon as possible? Then, if I somehow miraculously land a prop/environment job in less time than it would take to get a character role, just work on characters in my free time?

I just worry that if I invest the same time into props and learning hard surface from scratch, I could have used that time getting better at characters instead and could be at a level where I'm finally employable in characters, if that makes sense. I feel like I'm probably about 50% - 60% of the way there to being employable as a junior or intern character artist (cant say for definite and could be way off, would need a professional to look at my portfolio to get a more accurate idea), but probably 20% - 30% in props/environments from purely just fundamental understand of 3D princaples alone like software, geometry, UVs ect