Hello, haven't been around here much, as game design has taken me to other tools, anyways...

A friend and I want to start an online business selling packs of futuristic and modern fictitious weapon models for shooter games. I've been out of the modeling game for a while now but I had an easy knack for quickly creating fictional weapons, realistic firearms in particular.

My main flaw was the texturing, I never finished anything because of the 2D work. That's where my friends comes in. He's spent years modding games and creating new textures, and he has just ungodly good talent with anything 2D, especially concept art.

So before I dive into this I had a few questions about what's in demand. What's the average poly count for guns in independent FPSs? How many, and what kind of textures would I need to do? What cool guns do people want?

I've already jumpstarted on some sketches of sci-fi revolvers. I noticed a lot of new sci-fi shooters like Resistance and Kill Zone have huge wheel guns as sidearms. Makes no sense to me but I wanna keep up with the trends.

The lack of jobs in my area has led me elsewhere to find work before I go to college. Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

You can try to sell the Model of course,
but whatever you have shown really lacks in quality.

A Model without texture is of no help to the customer, as the texturing
and texture finetuning poses the most work.

Weapon Models are thousands on the Market.
Untextured weapons even more.

First get some Models in an acceptable quality(Texturing, animation) done, before considering to really start a business based
on that.

Also dont try to just make Weapons.
A customer (who really knows how graphically balanced game should look)
has no use for wepons wich are made in one style, and the
other graphics in another style.
So you should rather think of making content packs,
Model collections using the same style.

I was thinking specifically of content packs focusing on one style and I know exactly where you are coming from on each point. I can also do vehicles fairly well as I generally think about mechanical stuff, but my skills end at mechanical stuff. I never liked organic modeling and it's just hard for me to thing that way. So all and all to put together a complete plug and play content would be hard with just us two. Perhaps guns, vehicles, and level textures would be a nice package?

I know these models aren't of great quality, but I know my mistakes, I'm just showing an example of what I did in the past with very little effort and no reference pictures of any kind. With my full attention focused (I have no occupation at the moment and problems with my band) I think I could do much better.

Oh and read the whole post, I'm not doing the textures, my friend is, and his talents are amazing. I just really like his art style. I NEVER did my own textures, I mentioned 2D is not my thing. I did however do my own textures maps, and that is a big chunk of the work I know.

Don't think I'm trying to make a quick buck. But I am desperate for work if you can here me out. I got a lot of free time and I feel lost without work, it's actually a good stress reliever. I'm sure by the time we're done all the planning and setting things up I'll be out at college.

Oh and if you're wondering why I choose to model guns, well most guns I'm finding in FPSs are all looking lame or it's the same licensed ones. I thought really creative and really detailed weaponry in various styles to fit any game might attract some attention. I'm not saying that's already been done. Maybe I take the guns too seriously lol

I'm just kicking around ideas, but I am serious about this. Any advice would really help me out.

You might want to also check out some real life weapons. Your models are mostly cylinders and are very blocky. Study weapons from games like Farcry, Crysis and Call of Duty. If your weapons do not match up to nextgen standards then most people will not buy them no matter how cheap they are. GS out.

Yes I know these are low detail, which was intentional, in fact I regret posting those because I did not intend to sell these and they are very old. I studied other models and copied their methods. Sorry about what I said about no reference pictures, I just didn't remember. I have kept modeling, just not guns.

Yes I want to keep up with the next gen standards, that's why I am asking questions. Oh, and who needs Far Cry when I've handled many of the cool guns in the game? lol I wanted to do fictitious weapons simply because it would be more fun and I like being creative.

I'm working on new material, but it will be quite some time before I have anything presentable as suddenly things are too good for me right now, in fact my free time is suddenly packed with things to do.