Yes, you must fix it before submitting. Recalculating normals doesn't work 100% of the time, so sometimes you need to manually flip faces. In edit mode, select the faces that are backwards and click "flip normals" on the panel to the left.

Looks like you submitted it correctly. Reddit is just a way of linking people to things.

Looks great. I rated it up.

Yeah that makes more sense. Just looking at it, it didn't seem like it was that many.

It involves animating a sequence in blender and then exporting that sequence as a .smd. Then you'd append a few lines to the QC to make sure the idle animation isn't just a static smd. I've never actually done this; you should try contacting a workshop contributor who has like Heinous and ask them for tips.

Oh shit lol. Yeah I didn't even look at the tri-count.

Looks great... I don't know what else to say.

Using particles is pretty easy in the source engine (there is nothing you do on the Blender side):

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showpost.php?p=33455838&postcount=2308

You'll have to click the "edit QC" button on the compiler window to enter in this information.

Go to the Object tab > navigate to the "Display" subheading > make sure "Texture Space" is unchecked. Also make sure that "Bounds" is unchecked.

Haha, pretty good start :P

I think your first model was better than mine. So there's that.