Let's make our own models (and maybe even animations)

Attaching a model to one of the existing skeletons (after which it becomes "animated," as you like to incorrectly say) is not some otherworldly magic. It's a skill that I possess, and you can acquire it yourself by spending a couple of evenings watching tutorials on YouTube. As for creating your own animations, that's "not my area of expertise," but in principle, if you're really keen, there's an option to create mocaps using Kinect. I have experience with that, and the results were decent, but it required some cleanup. No offense, buddy, but let's face it: you're not going to do anything serious with modding anymore. You couldn't add my fully finished Khea Belekh model with walking animation to NHF in a year and a half. There was nothing to do at all. Just take the contents of the archive and add it to your game. Is it essential to have a fire effect? Okay. But that's half an hour to an hour of work. Anyway, no offense, I don't believe you'll do anything significant with modding. This in no way diminishes the fact that I have a very good opinion of you as a person and I am grateful to you for your contribution to the formation and development of the community. I think you can still play a useful role in this. But as a modeler... you understand everything yourself. Your knowledge is superficial and outdated. Are your models like a round shield and a cone-shaped sword with blurry textures? It's not bad for a start, of course. Everyone starts somewhere. But you need to keep moving forward if you're interested in it. And of course, you could, if you wanted to.