The best way to do such things is to do it yourself. You're certainly passionate about it, and that's the key to making a really great work. This will motivate you to learn how a modeling tool works, and by working on it yourself you'll be able to tweak all of the little details in it to make sure it'll come out as you expect.
It may seem intimidating at first, but actually it's the best way to get help. When you need to figure out how to do rigging, uv mapping and so on, people can help by giving answers or by pointing you in a direction where you may figure it out.
The creative work of translating such technical skills into an artistic design is something very personal, and the quality of the final result tends to be directly proportional to how involved the person working on it is.
I recommend taking a look at how flp progressed on his model
here for inspiration. Follow his replies to see how things worked out for him. There's a good amount of information in that discussion.