All of this is already doable in Anim8or. The thing is you have to use actual vertices and faces and edges. It's not as simple as grabbing something and moving it around that easily. If you're talking about sculpting (programs like Zbrush, Mudbox, Sculptris) then it's very doable with those programs, but they don't have any edge looping or good topology. In other words, they are great programs for still objects, but when it comes to animation and rendering in other programs they're awful (unless you retopologize, or give them a good structure basically.)
There's a lot to learn, but 3D cannot be that easy, to be honest there is no way. I think the closest you'll get are sculpting programs (sculptris is a good one to start with, as it's very simple and free.)