>>1014076
I’m probably not the best person to get advice from because my “workflow” is rather irregular and inefficient, and I don’t know much about making money, but I’ll give it my best go since you asked. Normally I like to start by studying my subject of interest by drawing because it helps me internalize the various contours, proportions, and details, but then I typically model without reference. I don’t do that on purpose most of the time, I just forget that references are something I can use when modeling, but I did make image planes for the first model, and that’s probably why it looks better than the others. Modeling without a reference can make a project take a while to complete, but sometimes taking a while can be a good thing, at least for the design of something. Nora in particular took me a span of 8 months to complete, but a lot of that time was spent not working on the model, then coming back to it and working out the kinks with a fresh eye.
The other part of it is about having well-developed creative muscles. I spent much of my youth playing with legos and doing origami, and both of those things help develop a sense of how to go about the creative process, and also develop the senses for shapes, proportions, and colors that look nice. Lego minifigures and MMORPGs with good character customization also helped develop my senses for character design specifically. Minecraft was also something I spent a lot of time on during my teenage years, and that was really good for architecture, environments, and atmosphere. What you pull inspiration from is also important, like with the media I listed in my previous reply.