You mentioned a fear of failure. One thing the computer allows us is the freedom to experiment. You have multiple undos in many programs and the ability to save off various versions or various steps (under different names) in almost all of them. This can be quite liberating if you are hesitant to put pencil to paper or commit to the permanency of watercolor and ink. If you plan to toon your figures, you can either use a vector drawing program (such as Illustrator) which will allow beautiful scaling and a naturalistic workflow, OR you can use 3d figures and then flatten them. Lighting and texturing become more of a concern at this point. I will recommend that you do spend time drawing because it trains the eye and brain to recognize when something is right as well as to notice details. If I photograph a plant I might see how the light illuminates the petals until they glow, but if I'm drawing it I notice the hairiness of the stems and curl of the leaves. Don't worry about what is in your sketchbooks (or WIP files) unless you plan to become another DaVinci where people will ogle your chalky fingerprints for clues. Even though I've been doing computer art for a couple of decades (mostly games), I still carry a small sketchpad when hiking so that if I see an interesting rock or leaf I can scrawl a few meaningful lines. It is a rare editor who sees my thumbnails! Carolly