Important facts about the first V:EKN set in development

What about volunteer artists?
I've repeatedly offered to do some of my signature style of artwork for cards, absolutely free, and have not gotten any response.
(Yes, I'm serious. There must be some cards for which some "MSPaint-style art" would be appropriate. I can certainly do better than Gary frakking Chatterton. For free.)

Drain wrote: I'm guessing designers (understandibly) do not want to flood the game with non-physical cards while there is still a chance for the game to be re-marketed in the future.

Also, for a first-time experimentation, better print 35 cards than 350. If the set is botched (who is alway a possibility), having only 35 card limit the impact of the botch.

(note that I don't want to imply that the set is currently cruising for a botch, this can't be known before some month or year after the release)

2 cents time
I am most likely one of the more, if not most objectionable people playing this game. For various reasons. I am also someone who is intimately aware of the difficulties of managing large and complex projects, due to the nature of my profession (Game Designer). I have had long time respect and acquaintance of Jeff, and can only say that if he took a step as serious and as large as the one he did, he would not have done so without serious reasons to do so.

His statement, as has been stated repeatedly previously, was measured, carefully thought out and well balanced. As the responses so far have been limited to
A) straw men arguments
ad hominen attacks
C) irrelevant rubbish
I feel that there is a very large possibility if not even probability that what he says has a strong basis in reality. I would like an actual response from the IC, as it seems that there is no true response but merely knee jerk reaction statements.
Guys, in the end, we are trying to do this for the players, by the players, and of the players. What has been mentioned in the OP make me very able to believe that exactly the kind of power politics described occurred. The fact that the official response has been vehemently venomous without even in the slightest addressing the actual issues raised leads me to believe that the OP most likely has a large measure of truth on his side.
Please, everyone, do what seems to have been the OP's intent. Put your personal ego's and needs aside and put the need of the greater community at the fore.

Still no word from the V:EKN about all this? I guess my hope for having new, interesting playable cards from a player community based demand are all but dashed. Only official word so far is that Jeff is a jerk for violating an NDA and even mentioning anything about a seemingly broken process. Maybe he was right.

Now I am far from judging who's to blame, or whether it was a bigger deal to violate an NDA or (as it so seems) to violate the trust of many players. Yet I am among those, who believe, that this open discussion of the creation process is somewhat excessive. It is my opinion that the cards should be created in a mysterious, cultic, hermetic process, so that I, as a player, could be presented with the new cards as a gift from the divine. In this way I do not need to question the cards, but, if the opposite happened, e.g. the process was disclosed and discussed "democratically", then the magic of it would simply be gone and the cards would eventually lose the nimbus of "true cards". What I'm saying is, that, no matter that these are "fan cards", they still could be taken seriously. Yet, in any game, players tend to be sensitive to the "esoteric" side of the game, they wish the rules to be made by someone "competent" (and was it not, that LSJ became a sort of a "priest-like/oracle-like" figure?), the rules need to be obeyed, or else the game is meaningless and, finally, the cards are artifacts, which means that they, unless taken "seriously" (= have a symbolic value), become scraps of paper.
Now please, my dear IC and the Design Team - stop being human! It ruins the magic.