"My only hope is that technology to make this process easier will advance." If you just want to source art assets using 'standard' definitions used in CG and g

"My only hope is that technology to make this process easier will advance." If you just want to source art assets using 'standard' definitions used in CG and games you a. Subcontract them b. Purchase them from some store or source free ones c. Use generator programs like Poser and any combination of those. If you want to learn modeling and art in general,you learn modeling. The trick is it's partly art, so unlike, say, woodworking, the number of free parameters to master is quite large.