Within striking distance of a commission.... :)

...and Im definately keeping cost vs. quality in mind, but for me, the big issue is which artist out there can best-capture the heavily anime-influenced theme of my Scrapper?

This is the best pic I have at present of his current look:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...submission.jpg

...but if need be, I can try to get some more shots of him!

Anyone have any suggestions as to who I should look into?

anime-influenced? his hair isn't some ridiculous color like blue, green, or red! Where are the giant robots, fan service, and the ridiculously hot childhood friend who falls in love with her fugly best friend? Hehe!

Oh and the mandatory:
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anyway, if you want art of your character (I really should make a quick guide for this) here is a list of ways to get it:
<ul type="square"> [*] First regardless what type of pieces you are having done, you need a site to upload your screenshots and images. I personally use www.photobucket.com for my reference shots since it's free to get an account and I can manage and directly link to my images. There are many other free image upload sites out there, just find the one that works for you.
[*] next you need to have decent reference shots. Below are examples of both bad and good:
+ VERY BAD!!! Make sure there aren't any powers running on you that would get in the way of your costume. Also don't take it at night, the darkness effect makes everything dark blue and harder to see.
+ Bad but workable... This still doesn't give us a close-up view of the costume and certainly doesn't give us multiple angles to work with.
+ Good and very workable! This gives us multiple angles of shots, cropped (in MSPaint) from a screenshot like the previous example, and then added all together into one image. Still we could do better such as the next example.
+ Ideal Reference Shot! To get this kind of shot do the following: go to the tailor on your character and opened the desired costume. Get your first angle shot ready and hit the printscreen key. Next you'll want to open up MSPaint (or any other image editor) and paste into a new document. Do this until you have 3-4 shots and then crop out the unnecessary parts and organize them like in the example.
+ This is crazy ideal, and pretty unnecessary! If it's important to you go ahead and do this with all your character's costumes, but you better off doing each costume individually as a separate file (more web-user friendly that way). [*] Next you'll want to browse through the Art Forums here. There are many people that do free art and sketches for practice, most of the time nothing extraordinary, but good work never-the-less. Browsing through threads here also lets you see what people have commissioned ($paid for$) talented artists to do for them.[*] Commission a piece from an artist, ask around in this forum if you are having trouble finding artists that work for your price range. Regluars like Rowr and Thor's Assassin, will be more than happy to help you out. Also browsing through someone's DeviantArt friends and favorites list will give you good idea of the artists out there.[*] The most important thing that will score you art here is becoming an active member of our art community. Frequently posting and engaging in friendly conversation is what I mean by "active" member. We're a very friendly and welcoming community here, and anything extra you bring with you will be happily accepted by us. Also we are such compliment whores here! [/list]
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anime-influenced? his hair isn't some ridiculous color like blue, green, or red! Where are the giant robots, fan service, and the ridiculously hot childhood friend who falls in love with her fugly best friend? Hehe!

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Allow me to elaborate, Turbo....

He comes from a world that is, for lack of a better description, every anime-cliche out there rolled into one and given physical form...in other words, all the wildly hair-colored people and giant mecha are THERE...when he's not blowing them up, that is....