Something to keep in mind when trying to learn modeling and texturing and rigging - you will make garbage for a year or so ***(possibly longer than that). *** Don't be discouraged and try not to get frustrated.  Nobody walks up to these tools and learns them from a standing start in a couple of weeks.  If you hear of someone who learned this stuff quickly, good for them, but it's good to start out with reasonable expectations - if you surprise yourself and learn to do things quicker, so much the better!

No amount of money spent will make you a master modeler.  Expensive tools are not necessarily the best tools - Blender is free, widely used, and well-maintained.  Same goes for Gimp for texturing.

Simple tools are also not necessarily the best tools - regarding Blender again, it has an arcane interface if you're already familiar with another modeler, but if you're brand new I highly recommend starting with Blender and sticking with it, rather than screwing around with simple modelers like Sketchup and the like, which you will eventually grow out of and discard.  Blender does EVERYTHING.  Learning to use any program will take time and brainpower, and if you end up growing out of a given program, that learning effort goes down the toilet.  It is very unlikely you'll ever outgrow Blender or one of the other "big dog" 3D suites - I use Cinema 4D because I had money in my pocket at the time, but if I was starting again I'd pick Blender.

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