The Hitman 500

Joey Logano, the driver of Gamestop’s No. 20 Toyota in the NASCAR Nationwide Series, by all rights won Saturday with his outstanding Hitman-themed racing suit, patterned to look like a jacket and red tie. Gamestop’s put a ton of games on the hood of that car, but the suit is some next-level stuff. And we’re gonna go further than that in this week’s ‘Shop Contest.

Your goal: Design a NASCAR fire suit to resemble another famous video game character. This is going to be tough, I readily acknowledge that. It might be a 10-finalist week. I only have one source image for you.

Source Image: Joey Logano’s Hitman: Absolution Firesuit

I don’t have any source images for you other than that one, because that’s the one we have permission to use. If you want to use it as the basis for a remake of another character’s costume, go for it. If you want to put 47 in a car or the winner’s circle or actually dress up a driver, you’re on your own.

You know the rules: The 20 best will get rounded up and published at the end of next Saturday. Meantime, I and the rest of the starred commentariat will approve and promote as many as we can so folks can see them and pass judgment.

This is your no-frills step-by-step procedure to participation in the Kotaku ‘Shop Contest.

1. Create your ‘Shop.

2. Upload it to a free image hosting service. I suggest imgur. It’s stupid simple. No account is necessary.

3. This is very important: You must use the URL of the image itself. In imgur, this is the second URL it gives you after you upload the image. It’s under “Direct Link (email & IM)”

4. At the beginning of the comments roll, click “Start a New Thread”

5. To the right of your name, select “Image.”

6. Paste the imgur URL in the image URL field. It’s the field that says “Image URL.”

7. You can add editorial commentary if you want, but then just hit submit and your image will load. If it doesn’t, paste the image URL as a comment.

8. This is important: Keep your image size under 1 MB. It will not upload to comments if it is over that size. What’s more, we’re getting reports that if your ‘Shop is more than 1000px tall (vertical), it won’t upload. If you’re getting the broken-image icon, try resizing to a smaller dimension.

Now, Gentlemen, start your ‘shopping!