Career switcher looking for advice (UK)

A bit of background: My career to date has been in 2D animation, I'm 46 and have won shiny awards, but I can't earn enough as an animator to support my family unless I direct, in which case I'd work all hours and never see my son. When the lockdown started I was about to jump back into the job market after being stay-at-home dad for about a year, but things are suddenly very quiet on the job front.

I've always been a hobbyist tinkerer and loved making inanimate things do stuff (which led me to animation in the first place) - for the past few years I've been teaching myself CS in my spare time using Python, which I've really enjoyed, and for the last month or so I've been learning C#.

Up until now my game plan to switch careers out of animation has been somehow to integrate programming more into my day to day, and stepping-stone my way towards a new career as a developer. The obvious field to go into is games, but it seems the games industry suffers from the same intense downward pressure on wages as animation. My next thought was to use my knowledge of animation to sidestep into VR/AR.... however:

I have a chance while my other half is off work (until maybe July) to do something more drastic, and immerse myself in/get experience of software production, rather than just stepping-stone by degrees into another field. To that end, I thought about work-shadowing an experienced dev, or an internship, but I realise that there are practical obstacles to this, especially in a short time frame.

Can anyone give me some advice on how to approach this? Has anybody been in my position, as a middle-aged career switcher? I realise what I'm talking about may be a long-shot! Any advice, broad or narrow, appreciated.