In my family, I am the one who works with computers. So when my sister wanted a "Star Wars" style intro to be played on an LCD/Plasma TV at her wedding, I am the first one she went to.
At first I didn't think it would be too difficult, but most of the things I found on the web required flash or some sort of movie editing software. I did find one article on top coder that was C++, but my forte is ASP.Net and C# and I have no desire to waste time figuring out some of the low level GDI stuff it would require.
So I decided to try to post a project description on Rent A Coder. Last Sunday I posted a brief project description, including a link to a flash/freehand tutorial I found while researching this. Over the next three days, I received 25 bids from developers all over the world. This included the US, Canada, India, Germany, the UK, Romainia, Armenia, Argentina, Sweden, South Africa, Egypt, Poland and the Philippines.
The bids ranged from $13 all the way to $100, which incidently was the maximum bid I said I would accept for this project. Each coder was able to write a message with their bid, although some chose to write very little. That made it easier to narrow down the selection. A handful of coders submitted demos just to show that they could create the effect I was looking for. Of the demos I received, there were a couple that stood out, so in order to clarify the effect before proceeding so I sent a link to a youtube video of the star wars intro to a couple of the coders I was considering. One of the developers re-did their demo to show they could do it.
So today I accepted a bid for $59 from a developer named Catalin who lives in Romania. Besides the great demo he sent me, he was also the only one of the bidders who had his picture in the profile. I don't know why, but that helped me feel more at ease with selecting him.
I will try to post updates as he completes the work.