I would advise against using the educational versions of 3DSMax or Maya if you think that you’ll ever be in a position where you want to sell your game (or even if you want to keep using it beyond the educational period). You can’t use any assets created with the educational license for your commercial games. You could of course get a real license (200+ dollars a month) when you start making the final assets that will go into your game, but that will still be really expensive, because art isn’t a fast process and will take you much longer than you think. And if you don’t want to spend that sort of money, your only option then is to start re-learning everything in some other cheaper/free software, which is incredibly frustrating and will take you a long time. So I would suggest skipping straight to the cheaper/free options. And that’s either Blender, which is free (but a lot of people dislike using it) or MODO indie on Steam (which is somewhere between 200-250$ for a perpetual license or 15$ a month if you want to rent it). There are others, but these are the more popular alternatives.
It’s also maybe worth checking out free stuff like Krita (for 2D art stuff) and Sculptris (for 3d sculpting organic models).