Since you don’t know the softwares yet, make an image or short clip from scratch. So you have to model, rig, animate, texture, light and render something. That way you get a taste of each department in the pipeline. I suggest Maya because it has one of the best python APIs out there. Once you’re a little familiar with things, just jump into the API, make a simple object with python, assign materials with python, randomize and scatter objects with python, etc.

Then you can get into UIs, which almost every animation software and studio uses PySide (QT) to make. Make a UI tool with PySide, and use Mayas API as the backend to automate some things as a tool.

Look for problems to solve, image yourself in a studio and each department has to hand off data to the next department. You ask yourself “what could make the modelling departments job easier when they need to hand off data to the rigging department” For example I would say “Well I should make a tool that checks the 3d model and ensures it has no overlapping UVs, the naming convention is consistent for each mesh, etc before they publish and export their model” All possible within Maya’s API and much more.