HT-PB-66 Inferno

Really love the design here- the orange plasma tube rings of the accelerator make for a strong visual anchor to the gun, and you've got a great areodynamic-but-heavy-duty art deco thing going with the style that I really dig. I ended voting for a different piece, but your design was my runner-up. <img src="e.deviantart.net/emoticons/t/t…" width="15" height="15" alt="" title="Thumbs Up"/>

A big deciding factor, was the usability of the gun- I kept coming back to two things on your design that would make me a little wary of using the thing in real-life:
Seemed to me like the trigger placment was a little bit tight to fit a hand into. It might make it easy for accidental misfires to happen, because the weight of the gun would squeeze your finger between the plasma chamber and the trigger, and push the trigger in. And then you have to hire new minions. <img src="e.deviantart.net/emoticons/o/o…" width="26" height="18" alt="" title="OMG!"/> <img src="e.deviantart.net/emoticons/o/o…" width="46" height="34" alt="" title="I'm on fire!"/>

Second was how to hold the secondary handle in certain shooting positions without placing your arm against the coils...heat venting and stylish glows are important, but perhaps some sort of guard bar or mesh grille along the bottom third or so would help keep minion health care plans cost effective. Second and third degree burns are expensive worker's comp claims, and they already manage to do that with the espresso maker, let alone a directed thermal energy weapon. Good idiot proofing is never a bad idea. <img src="e.deviantart.net/emoticons/x/x…" width="15" height="15" alt="" title="XD"/> It can actually make something like this look even cooler, by helping to sell the idea of it being hot enough that the user needs the protection, and breaking up the rings into interesting patterns where the guard overlaps them.

On the technique side of things:
I'm primarily a 2-d artist, but my father has been doing 3d art since before gen-1 poser, so I've picked up a thing or two over the years. There are several suggestions I'd make for things to try that apply to both types of art and design.

One is that a little bit of texture and bump mapping can go a long way toward upping the realism. I resisted this idea for a long time myself, having started with traditional art, until I tried it for a while and realized how much realism even the most basic texturing can add to a piece that already looks fairly realistic without it.

Overlaying something like a sample from a picture of the bottom of a soda can or a smoothed-out piece of tin foil, can add less-than-a-pixel-wide metal glints, scratches, and random surface variations that are difficult if not impossible to otherwise create digitally at reasonable resolutions. Strange, out of context textures can make for interesting effects as well- textures that are completely off the wall are some of my favorites. For example, Low-res gravel or pavement with the effect level tuned way down can add an industrial powder-paint look to a surface, and with some settings tweaks can add a completely different bumpy rubberized look to grip handles. I even used a color-tweaked photo of a leaf of all things to put super-polished reflections onto chrome in one memorable picture.

Another bit of advice that is that the tiny details often matter as much as the big picture, especially in places that have unique differences, like the checkered area on the magazine. The impact of the pattern could be strongly enhanced by giving it some sort of "frame" that contrasts with the materials, values, and colors around it - a raised edge of chrome perhaps, or the same green material the body of the gun is made of. The area is already attention grabbing, so making it more attention grabbing while adding detail to that area for people to look at while they are there is never a bad thing. Same thing goes for anywhere that you have texture changes or unique details- find some thing else slightly less interesting to put in between an interesting area and the area around it, and then do the same for those details...and pretty soon you have something that's extremely detailed, just by playing around with patterns, shapes, and colors. (The hard part to master is learning not to loose the overall form, or get stuck on a tiny area and ignore the rest of the object as you do this.)

Like I said, love the design overall, and remember that on my choice of whether to vote for this design or your competition it basically came down to me considering the viability of the two as actual functioning weapons of war, which means you've already conquered half the battle- the rest is just advice for taking it to the next level!