from personal experience 3d printing and the first chapter of learning the ropes is 60% failure 30% hoping and cussing and a mere 10% "eureka but how the heck did i kade this?"
i use simplify3d, which is great btw with a filament based printer and solely pla as material.
the first lesson i had to learn the hard way is no matter what a model looks like from the outside you have to make it "solid" or else you'll end up with a mess of a print.
had a model of a fallout tv set in the making for about 13 hours and while i was asleep it reached the hollow part at hour 8, everything afterwards was a mixture of a giant blob and spider web.
when it comes to modeling from scratch i'm about as talented as a chimp throwing sticks at a car to make the engine work
but as silly as it sounds the windows 10 3d tool is actually useful for beginners like me. not only does it finalize the model at the end thus making it solid, you can cut it apart, work on a certain area and put it together afterwards.
i'm nowhere near the level it takes for blender or zbrush, but oddly enough i find it easier cutting away stuff from a general form than building things up from zero, if that makes sense. like chipping away from a stone block to make a statue.
when i gave my roadkill rodney from tmnt a try it took weeks and several cans of beer to finally transform simple geometric objects into the shape i was going for. for example to get an even cylinder i took a standard rod put a cone on top and let the program subtract the overlaying model. then i mirrored the object and put it together. the neck is the same object, again centered and merged plus once the head is on top it does look quite symmetrical.
sadly i'm not familiar with the source material your object originates from but you could always give thingiverse or yeggi a try, lots of good quality and free models to maybe even builld upon.
i guess as long as it's personal use and you don't charge any money for it there's no ill intend.
if by any chance the object is used in a recent game, i use nifskope to get certain models out of fallout titles for example, doesn't matter if its the full game or a single mod from nexusmods.you could then convert it into a stl or obj file.
lots of items in my fallout project where done this way.
hope this helps a little and remember failure when 3d printing is almost guaranteed, but the 10% you end up with a unique item for your collection make it up for tenfold.