I just don't see why you torture yourself doing it this way.
It's not my idea (and if you ask me it's not the best idea, either). But to quote Mr. Knowitall,
Find an artist you like, from here, or anywhere else (I'm sure you could find someone on DeviantArt) and offer them the money. You can then work with them to get a quality piece you are both proud of.
There's the sticky point of the issue. Consider this bit (part of
an earlier dispute with the Something Awful crowd):
Quote from: crazy_rabbit on June 10, 2013, 06:09:12 AM
People are a valuable resource- the most valuable in terms of something like bitcoin.
I think that's a common misconception. Selected people are the most valuable resource, much like selected earths are the most valuable resource. People generally are about as valuable as dirt generally.
So, community of people ready to do what? Ready to sit around and opine on things [they don't understand, have never done successfully etc]? Ready to ask for scammer tags? Ready to create one of them "
securities" based on "maff and stuff" and their "
life experience" (aged 20ish)? Ready to do something useful? Actually able to do something useful?
Indeed, it's the harder road, taking a large clean mirror and forcing this community of nobody in particular to gaze into it. The gift of washing is never appreciated by the herd of cats, and perhaps it's not a rational use of resources - especially not in an "everyone for himself" sort of environment, which obviously means "absent community". But then again you know this about MP, he's never taken the easier road when the right one was at all available, and he's never taken the "rational" road to nowhere either. As the old saying goes, "millions for defense but not a penny in bribes". Exceptionally enough he actually has the millions, too.
Doing these types of contests is frowned upon by a lot of designers and illustrators, because you are asking them to do (in this case potentially hours upon hours) of free work on the chance they might just win. These types of projects take a lot of effort to complete, not just on the technical aspect alone, but also thinking of the ideas and concepts.
I trust you've read the first comment on the article, where this point is at length discussed.
If you don't have a lot of money to spend on a project, that is absolutely fine, but instead of holding a "contest" like this, I would argue you would be much better off contacting someone, paying them, and working with them directly.
I trust you've read all about the IPO which collected something like 9000 Bitcoin. That IS a lot.
The outcome of a design is only partly based on the designer,
a good client who knows what he is looking for and is able to communicate that effectively to the designer is going to end up with an end product he is much happier with.
That may be, but this isn't that.
That isn't to say these contests don't ever work, and you are free to do whatever you want, obviously, but this is my opinion anyhow.
The problem with your opinion isn't that it's yours, is that it's not particularly related to the subject at hand, especially if you've not actually read the stuff mentioned above.