Totally agree you get what you pay for, this response was crafted directly for op I am guessing that money is an issue for them atm, although.... I have had some amazing artists on fiverr, one created me a 30 second commercial with Muppets for a project I was working on for children, they charged me $10 for the job (would have been 5 but I wrote the script (normally done by artist) and asked him to do things he had never done before cinematically. It is possible to be frugal and get high quality work done but your not going to find it over night, and it will require you to do research into the artists past work. That 1 ad drove TONS of traffic to the site and paid for itself in literally 3 days via the additional ad revenues (impressions only) it created.
Best advice... Start with free gif creator
this will hold you over until you can find a suitable artist.
Find a good artist, but do your research before hiring anyone, look at their past work, read client reviews of them, google is your best friend.
Hold donation drive with ++ phat loot for anyone who helps out
Profit
Edit - Yes quoted text is not my current name, just changed from personal to network name
