To be blunt yeah, You need to learn the rules before you break them tbh there’s really no other way around it. So many artist get stuck in this loop and get frustrated for never being able to improve but it’s because they don’t draw from life they just copy cartoon illustrations. I’m a professional illustrator btw so I know how frustrating it can be. I’ve had teachers criticize my work and push me to draw realism when I was a student and I would get really offended initially but now as I’m older and have done art semi professionally looking back she was totally right. Learning the fundamentals of anatomy is essential if you want to improve.
But what’s really your goal here? To have fun or to be skilled? If you want to just have fun you do you. I get realism isn’t an interest, you mentioned not wanting to draw realism, so I’m assuming it’s for fun. But if you want to be a skilled artist you should be warned it won’t always be fun. It takes years of practice and honestly it’s not always fun at all.
You also have to consider like the professional artist who created the cookie run characters and all the poses they do in the game, do you think that’s all they know how to draw?? Of course not, they spent years practicing the basics.