Messing around in Blender... no real goal in particular except to practice with the tools. It's a long way from being finished but I did learn a bit about aligning objects and got a little more comfortable with the UI. I don't have the time, or the artistic ability, to get really good but it would be nice to get to the stage where I can put together some game assets that are a little more evocative of my intentions than a collection of primitives. I'm probably missing something obvious but I did have trouble keeping things in the middle. It's also not such a great idea to just drag out faces as it screws up the object scaling. Live and learn.
Tools - Blender
I'll never be an artist. However, it's often useful to have some ability with the various asset creation tools. Blender, being free, is a very good way to create some 3D assets to test out ideas and/or build up something basic. More experienced artists may well have access to something more professional like Maya, or 3D Studio Max. That's not to say that Blender is less capable though. For my needs, it's perfectly usable.
Creature - based on the Lynda.com Blender 2.4 Essentials course.
I've no experience with other modelling tools (beyond some dabbling with Sketchup) but, with my limitations in mind, and a bit of thought about how to approach it, I've created some passable assets to use as placeholders. I've still a lot to learn about texturing, and more advanced modelling techniques and it's possible I won't get there but that limitation is with me and not the tool.
The interface is a little off-putting but there is a lot of power there. Following along with a video tutorial helped to begin making sense of it. Being able to filter out the stuff I don't need broke that initial mental paralysis. Knowing how to get back to the default state was also a big help.
The tools I mostly need access to
There's plenty more to learn so I'll follow this up as I do more with it.