Playing around with stuff like this is a great way to figure out where your strengths lie and what you have the most fun doing. My advice is to keep poking at it, try a bit of everything, and don't worry too much about making things perfect - you'll keep finding better and better ways to do things as you go. Just sit down, have fun, and make something, anything - even if you're just blindly plugging away at it without a single clue as to what you're doing at first. Plug every question you have into Google, and check out sites like the Polycount wiki, it links to a boatload of helpful stuff: http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Polycount