>>360180986
Time for my normal guide:
Take a word. Cat, dog, lizard, bird, boat, slut, zombie, whatever. Look for a base that has a lot of features you like. For a lot of people right now, they grab Nyasuka or Imeris right now for cat and slut respectively. 
Think about things you like to decorate your avatar with it. Texture editing is a bare minimum and you can still do cool shit that makes it work.
Play videogames and think about what games you like that have clothes you can make work on your model. This is actually fairly flexible and gives you a lot of options.
Search bowlroll and deviantart for more outfits or entire MMD/XPS models to sort out and use. You can find some really nice anime outfits browsing around, or some really hacky gamerips.
Reminder that even the bare minimum of edits should set you apart from every other member, but you can always do more, and learn more. Everyone is learning, so ask around.