Can you use imgur.com for image hosting?

It's working for me. Make sure to deselect the "RLE compression" option when exporting as a .tga from gimp.

Give me one second to try. Exporting from blender may not give you the alpha channel.

I just downloaded Gimp and got it to work using the thread I linked you. Here are the steps I did:

Open gimp > new image 512x512 > using the brush tool, I made a simple red circle in the middle (make sure you flatten your image if you have multiple layers) > I selected the red circle using the magic brush tool > In the layers window I right-clicked the layer and chose "Add Layer Mask..." and chose "Black" > your image should disappear > with the selection still in place, use the fill bucket to fill the portion of your icon with white > your icon should appear again > deselect everything by pressing ctrl+shift+a > in the layers window, right-click the layer and click "Apply Layer Mask" > finally export the .tga file.

I can't really say what's going on since I don't use GIMP. Maybe check out this thread: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?p=34562686#post34562686

Make sure to apply the mirror modifier, make sure there is no overlapping/duplicate vertices, and add hard edges (edgesplits).

And also please use www.imgur.com for image hosting. Photobucket is ad-riddled, slow, and buggy.

Asymmetric is perfectly fine.

Yes that will be a problem, but you can simply enlarge the hat to encompass the hair.

Well as far as I know the new importer doesn't support animations. If you're looking to just compile manually (for a mod or something), try this tutorial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtsPyLTk634

An easy way to select connected vertices is by pressing "L" while hovering your mouse over the mesh. Try doing that over the staff and see if it selects just the staff.