I've tried to hire artists from Upwork. Anecdotally the experience sucked. I made it clear it's for sprite sheet game assets, but it quickly got flooded by applicants who clearly never have never drawn sprite sheets.
Event worse, about 15% of portfolios had stolen artwork. (I've been around for long enough to spot obvious stolen art, but I'm not a human google image search so the real rate might be much higher than 15%)
I ended up contacting an artist that I found on itch.io directly.
> The site works if you block India especially for most things.
The site works if you don't try to get anything done by paying $5/hr to anyone. I have gotten jobs done by people from India, Serbia, and other places. I just chose sufficiently reputable freelancers and paid them what they are worth and it worked perfectly fine in all cases. There was no magical difference between freelancers from the US and freelancers from other countries in the same price ranges.
Event worse, about 15% of portfolios had stolen artwork. (I've been around for long enough to spot obvious stolen art, but I'm not a human google image search so the real rate might be much higher than 15%)
I ended up contacting an artist that I found on itch.io directly.