It's a fairly bad model but I want to go ahead and animate it anyway. Intended for Counter Strike Source. I believe I'm supposed to get the Source rig skeleton but beyond that I have no knowledge of animating.

Oh, I have yet to texture it as I'm a bit lost on that as well. If you could so kindly nudge me in the right direction, that would be appreciated.

That's a big inquiry. It's a bit like saying, I drew a plane, can someone tell me how to build it.

A good start would be digital tutors if you have the cash. Often you can find tutorials on youtube. Either way there's a lot to learn, good luck.

Well, it would be useful to let us know the modeling application you're using at least.

3DS Max

Err, sorry. I'm afraid I made my question too general.

More than asking how to do those. I mean, how do I transition from a model to texturing to animating? I suppose it's still fairly general.

I don't understand the question. texturing and animating are two things. Maybe you need to "bake" the texture on the model. This means right click -> convert to editable poly/mesh (or whatever you are using). This means all the modifiers will be "applied" to the model, but you cannot edit them any more. I hope that's clear, but I have a feeling it doesn't have to do anything with the question...

After modelling, you need to do a "UV unwrap" In 3dsMax, which defines how your 3d shape will be unfolded onto a 2d texture. Then you can paint that 2D texture in photoshop, etc...

For animating, you make a Skeleton in 3dsMax and then "skin" your mesh to the skeleton. Then you animate the skeleton's bones, which in turn will move the vertices that each bone is "skinned" to.

You could try to UV map before UV unwrap. UV map offers you some possibilities, like sphere mapping, cylinder mapping etc, it's much easier than unwrapping, and maybe it's enough.

Ok thanks. Also, any tips or methods of keeping the model perfectly centered on 0,0,0 and keeping the scale at 100% across all three axes?

Ok thanks. Also, any tips or methods of keeping the model perfectly centered on 0,0,0 and keeping the scale at 100% across all three axes?

Sure.
Translate the model as close as you can to the center.
Delete half of the faces.
Grab the the center edge loop or the verts where the symmetry should start.
Scale the till they are flat then Snap them to the Center.
Mirror across.

When I delete half the faces would I have to slice plane down the middle first? Also, what about 1:1:1 scaling?