Hey so I posted this in the How do you model shapes thread but nobody seems to be replying and I need help asap.

So I'm starting this new project for school.

I need to model a tree for the scene below. The teacher wants me to to use animation deformers to get the curves and such... but I'm wondering how I should go about doing the rest. Like should I make a cylinder and extrude the faces to get the branches?

In the end I want to take it into zbrush but the teacher wants me to do as much as I can in maya.

Moose suggested doing strip modeling but that is going to take too long I think.