Odesk isn't a place for quality artists. If you are not confident in your ability to identify professional artists from amateurs than I would not advice you to go through odesk.
conceptart.org is a good go to community to concept artists. The community here generally stride for realistically rendered artworks. However, in the recent years this website became flooded with more newcomers and students. It may take you a while to sift them through.
polycount is a good go to community for 3d production artists. There's actually a good amount on top industry professionals who are active in this forum.
Deviant art is the largest community by user count. But you're more likely to find a mix bag of talent here. If you're looking for more anime / stylized art, this would be a good place to start.
Behance is mostly concentrated with graphic designers / motion graphic artists. So you can look for UI related talent here.
A source I would recommend is CGHUB (www.cghub.com). It's now the most active community among industry professionals.
What kind of game are you making. If you provide a little more detail I may be able to help you pinpoint where to begin looking.
I think the problem comes down to the kind of market and audience you're attracting. As a freelancer you really have to position yourself for the right market that corresponds to your rates. HN is a very designer/entrepreneur driven community. my guess is that people on HN would want to spend less money on design and more on development.
I would update your website itself also. To me your website doesn't speak the same level of sophistication as the piece you see in the portfolio. Your website represents your self and your identify as a designer. Dress it up a bit, this is your best chance to really showcase your design sense and originality. As many other people mentioned before, package your product well.
As a full time freelancer, you should spend at least 30-50% of your time marketing yourself and networking with potential clients. Building a solid customer database and having these customers refer you to perspective employees are most important if you want to have a consistent flow of work.
Are you really putting your work out there? Here's a quick checklist to get the ball rolling.
1. Do you regularly update your portfolio with new pieces?
2. Do you have a profile on all the designer networks? (behance.net is a good one to start with).
3. Do you keep in touch with your past clients and make sure they're happy with your work?
4. Have you considered starting a blog that would attract potential customers with valuable information about graphic design and design theories that they could use for their own projects?
I think with the quality and level of work in your portfolio you certainly deserve to get that rate. I've worked with other designers who charge twice as much as you do, but then again, they all presented their web presence really well. When a customer tells you your rates are too expensive, it doesn't necessarily mean that they don't have the budget. It could mean that they don't perceive your value at the price you quoted. As long as you can convince your clients that you're worth every penny and MORE, you should have no problem getting the rates you want.
we're looking to hire a freelance hacker who's an expert with java media framework and knows about CDN (amazon cloud front) to help us build our product. The product is a platform for people to easily share and learn knowledge. contact me for more details.
yea I would definitely invest some time learning photoshop at least, it's the most powerful package up to date. Since almost all designers use it, it'll be easier for you to communicate with them knowing the basics of the software. Let me know if you need any other help in this area, I'll try my best to point you to some resources.
I'd say that web design in today's market is as deep of a rabbit hole as development and coding itself. You really have to know the fundamentals of design, grid system, the trends, psychology of UX, and know-how to using the software packages.
Once you have a good grasp of the fundamentals of design theory (golden ratio, rule of thirds, color theory) it's really easy to adapt to different trends as you see fit to what you're working on. I agree with what some of the other guys suggested here, a quick way is to just copy what other sites are doing instead of trying to invent something yourself.
By copying, i don't mean a verbatim clone of other website's visuals. Look deeper into how a site is laid out, where certain elements are positioned, and try to figure out why the designers visualized the content the way they did.
All this would be assuming that you have a good understanding of photoshop/illustrator. If you don't feel comfortable using photoshop. I'd suggest you to either spend some time to pick it up (sites like tutplus have some basic tutorials that are pretty easy to follow http://psd.tutsplus.com/category/tutorials/interface-tutoria...), or you can just buy a prefab theme from themeforest like pius11 suggested.
thanks for the advice guys. Good thing my site is already designed around a lot of the questions asked on the app. I'm working on a project that i believe will bring e-learning to the next level. If anyone's interested in working together please feel free to contact me:)
oh, i mean it's out of the question to hire someone local because of the bootstrapping situation now. I've been funding development out of my own pocket until this point. I'm starting to look for a co-founder now.
do a contest to select a group of people where you give them a make over and a perhaps a couple dating lessons.
then pair up people on dates. Document everything in videos. what kind of fashion advices were given, what kind of places you should take people to along with dating tips that were given to them. and then post the videos on the website. your dating site could also serve as a goto resource on dating etiquette and tips to improving your odds in dating success.
A big percentage of people go on dating sites because they don't have time to actually go out and meet people. But I believe there is a bigger percentage of people that just lack the know-how of doing things in real life.
conceptart.org is a good go to community to concept artists. The community here generally stride for realistically rendered artworks. However, in the recent years this website became flooded with more newcomers and students. It may take you a while to sift them through.
polycount is a good go to community for 3d production artists. There's actually a good amount on top industry professionals who are active in this forum.
Deviant art is the largest community by user count. But you're more likely to find a mix bag of talent here. If you're looking for more anime / stylized art, this would be a good place to start.
Behance is mostly concentrated with graphic designers / motion graphic artists. So you can look for UI related talent here.
A source I would recommend is CGHUB (www.cghub.com). It's now the most active community among industry professionals.
What kind of game are you making. If you provide a little more detail I may be able to help you pinpoint where to begin looking.