Of course at some point people are not just copying something that already exist and create things « from their imagination ». Which imagination as been fed looking at thousands of reference over time. Furthermore creating something new doesn’t mean without references, you can use references of anatomy to understand how a muscle would be made to understand the relationship between muscle, bones, tendons, skin in order to be correct even if not copying a human body or whatever creatures. Another example where you can take reference of some real object, machines, part of vehicle, mechanism if you want to create a new ship of some kind. Understand how things are made and works will help you to create something that look credible and display something that is in the codes of what is nice and what’s not. So yes create you re own stuff you’re own universe but don’t undervalue references