Suggestion from a pixel artist
 

So this idea dawned on me when I saw the staff application NPC at unstick-me. Although I thought I'd like to apply, I really don't have the time, and my own projects suck up all of my spare time. Thus even if I wanted to contribute on an extremely part time basis, I could not justify dedicating time to era graphics, when my own projects are obviously more pressing.

So I thought, why doesn't era incentivize its players to contribute graphics? Graphics could be sent in to the staff team in the same method gun skins currently are, and the staff team could determine whether/how to implement them. Instead of just gun skins, it could be brand new guns, hats, tiles, cars, etc.

The incentive to create and send in graphics requires thought. Perhaps give the creator a free item of whatever he/she designs. Perhaps just set cash rewards for various pieces of graphics. Perhaps staff could release 'contracts' for which players could compete to design the requested item.

If you create graphics you can apply to be a GFX... it's really that simple.

The playerbase in general does not create graphics... most of the acceptable heads/bodies/gun skins are made by a small group of people who do it for a little side-cash or for friends. The rest is just recolors and still I reject tons of graphics all the time that aren't properly transed or I have to fix them myself. (I know Ish ends up having to fix a bunch of the gun-skins too and create icons).

The need for graphics isn't particularly large either; most of us administrators (at least Tim, Zao, Blue, & I can make our own graphics for whatever we're working on; and Ish has Mercy + Fuub to make all his stuff).

I make icons for my gun skins, but when you upload the skin it only lets you upload the main graphic.

I've actually uploaded a few GFX from independent artists (after making sure they weren't stolen). Some of these GFX are better than others... this is actually how we found Fuubaz, who's become one of the best GFX artists I've personally seen. Others aren't so good, as Rogue alluded to.
Some people love to see their work being used and have no desire for compensation. Others think they're justified to receive something.
The issue is that nobody on the team is even compensated nowadays (please disregard isolated incidents of misuse of power). So it seems odd to compensate people who independently send in artwork.
The other issue is how to compensate, as you said. Giving them a copy of the item hardly seems fair and would 100% bias people towards making guns. Also it's like mostly arbitrary the stats I give to a certain set of ganis/GFX. I could give the absolutely coolest GFX of all time AK47 stats if I wanted to, whereas people are often under the impression that the latest and greatest GFX need to have the best stats/coolest features.

This is really the crux of it. I'm basically the direct boss of devs now, and I by no means expect people to be putting in a ton of time. I want people who are mostly "on-call" to make GFX in a timely manner. It's also awesome when devs have the motivation to make stuff on their own (cf. Fuubaz's truck stop). But let's be realistic, most of us are busy and Graal is not a full time job.

So, yeah, I guess this is my advertisement to apply to the team if you're a good artist even if you can't commit 40 hrs a week or something.

Just upload them as a separate file under gun skins. The files all come to me as a list so that just involves me hitting "accept" twice. I would like to make the support center GUI more explanatory one day, but I'm scared to touch GUIs.