The studio behind Killzone and Horizon Zero Dawn are getting a new building and are now hiring. http://www.pushsquare.com/news/2018/07/horizon_zero_dawn_dev_guerrilla_expanding_moving_to_new_five-floor_office
Wrote up a post on my site about how I use the layered animation method to approach a run cycle https://www.thebrokentangent.com/news/2018/11/25/mage-run-cycle Enjoy!
It'll be worth waiting on what Alex has to say - my usual approach to modelling problems in Maya is to use something other than Maya You can slice across an axis/line but I honestly can't remember what the tool is called and there's a 200% chance it's moved since 2018 which is the last one I actually did any modelling in.
Unfortunately, no, the Suite is discontinued software and is no longer being actively developed or maintained. To continue using it I recommend working with PS 2014 to 2018.
There might be some leeway. Mine looks like this: https://cdna.artstation.com/p/resume_files/attachments/000/012/670/original/Brian_Choi_Resume.pdf?1548964581