[SotCodeLaureate]

Please let me recommend SideFX Houdini as an artistic (yet technical) tool to learn: https://www.sidefx.com (perhaps would be a kind of therapy in itself - it was for me long ago)

> exploring toon shading

Sounds excellent! And don't hesitate to publish your work.

[NoOneNearMe]

Curious, is SideFX Houdini similar to Blender? Why use one versus the other, if you don't mind answering.

[SotCodeLaureate]

Well, to make an (imperfect) analogy with programming tools - Houdini is like Emacs, while Blender is more like Visual Studio.

That is not to say that one is intrinsically better than the other, but for a technically-minded person (== any programmer in this case), the way Houdini works will make much more sense.

Learning either of these tools is not an easy task, but I think that starting with Houdini will feel more natural in cases like yours (SE background, interest in interactive graphics).

You can email me (see my profile here) for some more Houdini-talk!