Before I did it the other way round, and I’d start building the scene and model things as I went. The main issues with doing it that way round were that modelling became slower as the scene got more detailed (so eventually I’d give up making new things), and I also ended up modelling a lot more things because I didn’t really reuse assets as much.

This may all seem like common sense and it’s probably how most people work, but up to now my process was always building staff when I needed it rather than making a load of assets in advance.