Finish your BSC first!

What comes to your game demo, you don''t necessarily need good models at this point, and you could rely on demo''ing the engine alone. There are a lot of good quality textures available in the internet and making an example level is not that hard. Remember that publishers or other big guys WILL rely on the exact outlook of your demo, and not prospects of what it could be. So it has to look nice. You can try doing this by adding environmental effects that you and your friend can do as a coders, such as bump mapping, mirrors, dynamical lights, fire, etc.. Then if you make a nice level with loads of athmosphere in it, you might have a chance of scoring something..

Still, going to a publisher with no track record of even working in the industry, is likely to be hopeless. But if that doesn''t work out, your demo will always be an great asset when applying for a job, since you can show your demo to them. Same applies to getting artists, it might be easier if you have a nice design and a small demo to show to people.

If you would get an artist, it would be good to do a small playable demo of the game (that again, has to look very good), and present that to the publishers. At this point they would be also evaluating how fun your game would be, based on the demo. If there''s no spark of fun there already, then your chances are going to be quite slim.

I''ve seen some cases where a bunch of coders were making a demo, and wanted it to get published, but ended up being hired by the company they were demonstrating it to.