Location: Glued to the chair in front of my laptop
Posts: 1,158
You can make that EXTREMELY low poly, dont try to make leaves/branches, make boxes, and have your skinner make them look good, and if your skinner isn't that good yet, then just do whatever you were planning on doing in the first place.
I usually leave skinning 'till last because if the moddler makes the most minor of changes the skinner has to start all over again (unless they've got an amazing UVUnwrapper)
Generally:
a) Get what you want down on paper and check that its all possible within the engine limitations... usually by asking around on here
b) Once you've got that all finalised, develop concept art, continue untill it looks good and your moddler can work from it
c) Then wait for the finished model, request status reports and suggest changes/modifications to the model
d) Get the unskinned model in the game and make sure all the code works
