THUMB WARS #2023 (Patreon)

Here's a look at past thumbnails, the design process and the misfires!

The History Of Disney Flops

Version one was an attempt to look a bit more classier, earlier variants of this didn't have the movie posters below it, hoping the artwork would be more of a draw. Also, more daring, was no Eddache in the thumbnail! But the character is part of the branding and this thumb, while pleasant, lacks anything compelling. Perhaps with a different font would help but I decided to go something more traditional.

Now the characters do the heavy lifting of being eye-catching and recognisable, more than the movie posters. The characters had their saturation ramped up to pop against the background. In retrospect, putting Sorcerer's Apprentice Mickey could have been a better choice than Pinocchio.

The Oscar For Best Animated Movie (and why it's bad)

The only real variant this had was the wording, which I decided to make shorter. I find that the few words on a thumbnail, the better. There is a man in the background holding the Oscar, but in the end I decided to cut him out to help make the Oscar really pop.

April Fools Day On The Internet

This had a LOT of variants as I tried to find the right fit. The problem initially was the lack of an iconic character or object to put into the thumbnail before I settled on a Minion. I also tried to work on the title of the video into the thumbnail, as I find it's way more eye-catching than the title, but in the end I went for something more enticing and alluring.

The End of Winnie The Pooh

Initially I went with something that tried to convey the lifetime of Pooh - book Pooh, Disney Pooh and horror Pooh. We theorised the horror Pooh would be compelling to have on the thumbnail and we even experimented ramping it up.

But in the end I felt I had to drop horror Pooh because while there was a section about the horror movie, it doesn't represent the video as a whole.

This was the original thumbnail on the video, but it struggled to gain views, so I decided to drop the beige "old paperback" look of the background for a bolder colour.

Disney's Longest Unsolved Adult Easter Egg

I originally wanted to have a thumbnail where it was my head with the shocked expression and the word "BOOBS" in text across my face with the O's in place of my eyes! But I worried YouTube would probably shut that down, haha! So in the end it was just a lot of experimenting with the woman in the window and the position of the characters.

The Search For Pixar's Lost Easter Egg

I did experiment with this eye catching thumbnail, which I do like a lot, but my worry was a rusty old truck wasn't enough of an iconic visual, especially when this underplays the more famous Incredibles characters.

It's getting closer but the Incredibles red background wasn't attention grabbing enough.

This was the original thumb that went up. But as the video struggled to get those initial views, I made the background even more eye-catching.

And that brings us up to date with 2024!