THUMB WARS #2022 (Patreon)

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

How Cloudy Warned Us About Social Media (With A Chance Of Meatballs)

The only thing this really experimented with is the style of thumbs up

But then Apothael (this video's editor) stepped in and said "Why don't you just use the Facebook Thumbs Up?"

Don't know why I ever considered that! Haha!

Are Catchphrases Dead?

The only difference here was whether I have it say "Catchphrase" (singular) or "Catchphrases!" (plural). I went with the latter.

Did Captain Planet Save The World?

This went through changes as the video struggled initially.

I thought the dark humour speech bubble would make the video more appealing but that didn't work either. And I never really liked it. In the end I settled with a blend of the first and second thumbnail.

How Does CatDog Poop?

This was the original thumb, leaning into the fact that this question had been long teased. In the long term, I settled with this.

What Went Wrong Between Dreamworks & Aardman?

No variations. Very simple.

Why Are Movies Afraid Of Phones?

Originally titled "How Zootopia Uses Smartphones Smartly" (which I still prefer), this title and thumbnail combo struggled to pick up views. So I changed the title to be non-Zootopia specific but kept the duo in the thumbnail. This help boost the video in views tremendously.

Why Did The British Panic Over Ninja Turtles?

No variations. This took a lot of figuring out but this was the only finished thumbnail.

Why Does WALL-E Use Live Action?

Initially I considered something very simplistic.

But I included "Hello Dolly" since this was for "One Musical Scene" collaboration, where various channels made videos about musical scenes. I had called this video "When Wall-e Met "Hello Dolly"" but the views told me people weren't clicking through. Perhaps the word "Musical" was off-putting? Or perhaps the thumbnail was too messy.

So I changed the thumbnail and called it "How does Wall-e help restore faith in humanity?" This also didn't work very well. Time for another big change.

This was the final thumbnail and title change, and it actually boosted views in a noticeable way. It's a shame to mask the "One Musical Scene" element of it but it did help the video in the long run.

The Problem With Previously On

It's hard to make a thumbnail based on a trope without an iconic character or object to attach to it.

This was better, since it shows the scale of TV shows that use this, but it still looks too messy.

It's still not quite right, but it's a "that'll do".

The Evolution Of Cartoon Dads

I thought I would do something like the evolution of made but it's different cartoon dads. This was about as far as I got before I gave up on that direction.

The Paradox of Back To The Future vs Free Will

No variations on this one either. This video also struggled to perform well but sometimes the problem isn't the thumbnail or title, but the video itself isn't as good as it could be. I'm proud of the work done and the edit, but in retrospect, exploring "free will" wasn't that compelling a concept. Perhaps if I had made a video focussing on the paradoxes in BTTF that would have been more exciting.