Hello itch.io community!
My name's Michael and I'm a self-taught artist hailing from germany. I am a software developer by day, but around the age of 14 I fell in love with 3D art. I played around a lot with 3DS MAX and later even purchased a software called "Monzoom 3D" (if anyone knows this 
) for a whopping 200 €, which was quite a lot for me at that age. I tried to create some Half-Life 1 & 2 mods back then, but my ambitions were far greater than my skills at the time. After some years, my motivation dwindled as I had to focus on my studies and got more into programming.
Over a decade later I stumbled over Blender and my motivation has been rekindled. Today, stuff I was not able to figure out back then is easy as childs play (since I got stuck already at the easy stuff, haha). My main motivation is to create games in the Unreal Engine 4. To get something done I try to be as self-sufficient as I can, so I picked up Blender, the Substance Package and recently even ZBrush (benefits of having a salary 
). That does not mean I only work alone, though. I partnered up with an old friend of mine working together on some first, small games as our limited time permits. I'm doing the programming and some basic art, he's contributing the more awesome art. 
I'm not trying to break into the industry or anything, this is purely a self-realization/recreational hobby for me. So far it's been a lot of learning (only started sculpting a about a month ago, I'm more comfortable with Blender und UE4). I'm currently working on a puzzle game clone to get familiar with the whole process from start to finish while keeping the scope simple and small. After that I want to realize my own game ideas.
I registered here to keep up my motivation as well as to give and receive constructive criticism to improve. After all, there is nothing more valuable than sharing thoughts and opinions in a nice community, meeting like-minded people to help each other out. 
Cheers!