Before you enter the more difficult and definitely more expensive studio lightning..... read about flash techniques on
http://strobist.blogspot.com/ . Those guys are awesome, and show you that you can do a lot with 'normal' flashes, even the cheaper once.
Try manual flash exposure also. Meaning, putting your camera on 'M', and experiment with the flash, especially with bouncing techniques.
Gives you an idea of 'manual' ligthning, which you need with studio gear.
Studio flashes are manual, no TTL. that means you have to 'dial in' the right numbers. Secondly, you'll have to dive into 'multiple flash/lightning', meaning hooking up multiple flashes to your system.
That mostly brings you to the new world of 'triggers' and 'remotes'. You put a transceiver of the trigger set on your camera (as it was a flash), and put the receivers under your flash (can be cheap once!! Because it doesn't need TTL). Walla! Your ready for the studio hehe (and on the beginning of the road to find the optimum settings....
Serieusly... just experiment a bit with flashes, bouncing, and perhaps 'off camera' flashes (connected with offshoe cable). Buy a cheap umbrella (Blokker has some nice white once), but perhaps a couple of tripods. They are not that expensive at places here in Holland at Fotokonijn. For 100 bucks you have already a nice starting kit.
I building up my equipment also rightnow, but I'm not going into the real studio flashes yet. To expensive and for my 'semi-pro' photojobs, unnecessary right now (have to know also what I really need then!! Is a shitload of material to choose from).
I have 2 flash tripods (Manfrotto Nano) with manfrotto lite-tite connectors), some umbrellas, some reflection screens, yeah and 2 580EXII canon flashes, those are NOT cheap, but so fcking great to use!!
For triggers I use those cheap ebay triggers, not those 'bad' once, but the CTR-301 -> read strobist site, they tested them. Awesome triggers, still work while standing a good 40 meters away.
Only 'problem', you can only use shutterspeeds up till your max 'flash-sync' of your camera... in my case 1/250 on my 1D and 1/200 on my 5DmkII. Go faster, and you'll end up with 'black bars' in your picture.
(difficult to explain this on, but believe me, you'll see 'half black pictures' ...
Owwww... don't forget 'normal' lightning. I bought a 'daylight' lamp (also at Fotokonijn)
this one
it's cheap, it's a piece of junk (literally fell apart during a film shooting!!), but it works (just ducktaped the hell out of it, and it works beeeeeautifully now!! ). but it gives 'daylight' light, meaning of range of 5000K (blue-ish light zone, go lower, like lightbulbs, and everything goes 'yellow', mostly THE problem with indoor photography).
Only thing I need is a 'background screen', but since I'm video filming also rightnow (Canon 5DmkII!!!), i'm ending up buying lot's of stuff I need for filming (bigger videohead, buying stuff for sound, for focus aid (external LCD), etc, etc..... )...
I still want to buy such 'mobile' background screen, basically just two tripod stand and a role of paper.... for me it has to be put together fast, and detach very fast, so I can create a 'small' studio on the spot....
a well... .lot's of stuff to buy and look into
Try to read that strobist site. Lot's of info about flash technology and how to use light. I love those guys because they step 'outside the box', don't use flashes or lightning techniques because everybody does that, but they just look into what THEY need not what others say you need. (so skip my story , go find it out yourself hehe)
Ow,... second tip... sure lightning is the key, but.... try also photo editing techniques. Try shooting in RAW, and edit the picture in RAW edit programs (usually you get that with the camera, CAnon has Digital Photo Professional, which is an awesome tool!!)
What RAW does, is not compress it to JPEG rightaway, and leave all the camera software settings 'open', like whitebalance, like sharpness, like some colorsettings. It does show you the setting the camera was on, like whitebalance 'daylight' or some brightness/contrast settings the camera would use, but... you can change that!!
Most 'hefty' setting is the whitebalance. You take a picture indoors at night, you'll end up with yellow pictures. In RAW editor you can say ok, I don't want yellow, I know the wall is white, tell the program the wall should be white, and it changes the whole color setting, mostly dramatically showing the room 'cool' and 'white' all of a sudden.
Software editing mostly determines the 'atmosphere' you like in your picture. It's not for nothing that most model work is mostly 'Photoshop'. Sure the initial lightning has to be good, the picture has to be sharp, but almost else is 'Photoshop-able'... (even DOF effect and so on... not as 'good' as real lens DOF but....).
Just go out and read mate.... lots' of info out there.... I've seen lots' of Youtube movies about studio lightning, veryveryvery usefull!!
http://strobist.blogspot.com/ is a good place to start though....