Yeah, Photoshop is expensive allright, but it's the best. There is one other great tool though abd it's completely free: The Gimp. It has most features Photoshop has (if you plan to use it for texturing), but I'm not very sure about it having support for tablets... I would definately recommend The Gimp.

I'll back up Slowpid on this one; Rhino3D is a fantastic program, for both beginners and experts. The UI is very intuitive (and I'm usually a hard ass about interfaces), and the console is quite handy as well.

Thank you to everyone for your help. I'm waiting for my tablet in the mail now (I got a new inituos3 for x-mas for myself) and I've downloaded Rhino3D and Maya PE for me to play around with. I love playing with new tools and hardware so I'll be busy for the next couple months now lol!

As far as the EA horror story goes it isn't the first time I've seen that stuff. I read a book recently about breaking into the game industry which was written by a former EA employee who wrote about the company's track record when it came to crunch time and overtime...

Although its sad I have to say I'm dedicated enough to look past such things to find a job doing what I'd love to do. But I will say I'll definately think twice about getting a job working with EA.