I’ve never done any sort of modeling or animating before.
I’d like to make a very low polygon model that will be compatible with the UE4 default skeleton as I will likely purchase the animations. Can someone point me to a video where someone does this? Or just give me a nudge in the right direction? The getting started thread was just not quite enough I’m afraid.
You can export the UE4 skeleton by going to the mannequin and right-clicking on it, then there should be the setting to Export as FBX.
Once you exported it in a specified folder, you can go to a program like Blender and import the fbx, from there, you can create your mesh for the skeleton and know exactly where to put the specific bones (arms, legs, etc.). Then you’d have to do some stuff with modifiers to pair it with the skeleton, and weight painting is what you’d have to do from there to specify which parts work with which bones.
P.S. Delete the mesh from the old mannequin as you work, unless you want to use it as a reference
Hope that helps 
Immensely. Thank you.
I recommend you start here,
Then make sure you watch this following video, and the rest of this particular series, 22 videos in total, but many aren’t important for basic modeling just will be really helpful for knowledge about what types of animations you will need and how they will work in game.
Then please see:
Get the control rig scripts they have provided for free.
This along with the auto rigger will let you take any humanoid mesh, add the bones, and instantly look to add animations (they have some online you can view on your mesh in your browser like punches, runs , jumps and some others) you could do a spherical head, some blocks for torso, limbs made of cylinders, and voila you’ll be good to go (that’s what I did my first time through and it really helps in the learning process of making a mesh if you don’t have to try and make a skeleton, add physics handles, then curves to control it with…)
Finally
If you didn’t already know this you’re going to need Blender or Maya (I use maya because they offer a student license for free, so long as you don’t intend to commercialize this mesh you’ll be fine)…
Just remember, animating is tedious as all hell if your character isn’t set up with the correct skeleton, but luckily Maya 2016 has a built in humanoid skeleton to work around (its about the same as the one in UE4 and you should be able to retarget any animations to and from pretty easily).
Good luck 