GMTK Insider (September 2017) (Patreon)

In this issue of the GMTK Insider, I want to focus on something that might seem like a bit of a quick, throwaway part of the process - but actually involves a lot of time and work to get right. It’s the thumbnail.

This thing is so important. It’s the first thing pretty much everyone sees, and it must compete with all the other thumbnails on YouTube. It needs to be bold, eye-catching, and persuasive, while also accurately conveying the tone and point of the video. It’s a tough nut to crack.

For this one, I wanted to use the same piece of artwork from Metroid 2, AM2R, and Samus Returns, to show that I will be talking about the same game in its three iterations. 

To start, I got a transparent picture from Samus Returns from Nintendo’s press library (shh, don’t tell them I can still log in with my Pocket Gamer credentials!), and then got artwork from Metroid 2 and AM2R off Google Images.

To cut Samus out from the background on the second pictures, I used the magic wand tool to select and delete most of the background, and then the eraser and lasso tools to clean up the debris. Here's a good tip for removing all the tiny details.

I probably should use the pen tool to make a vector mask around the image, but I’m just more used to the other tools so I’m much faster with that.

I next put the three images into one picture and moved them around and resized them to get a nice composition.

I liked this setup with the Metroid 2 art in the middle because there’s nice symmetry with the remakes on either side. Plus, the video is all about giving Metroid 2 some love, and so putting that game front and centre of the thumbnail neatly emphasises this.

Unfortunately, I realised straight away that it would be very noisy without big changes. Three detailed and colourful images next to each other would just look like a mess on a tiny thumbnail, so I needed to do some work.

I created a nice blue gradient background, and made the Samus Returns and AM2R versions of the image fade into the background. To achieve this, I make them black and white (use the desaturate effect) and then change the blend mode - this time, “colour dodge” looked best.

The artwork is still very much there, but it blends in to the background.

Just putting the text on top would make it hard to read. So I needed to add a bit of shading at the bottom. This is mainly just achieved by putting a black rectangle on the bottom, feathering its top edge, reducing the transparency, and setting the blend mode to colour burn. 

But I also had the Metroid 2 Samus fade away. To do this, I made a copy of the artwork. On the bottom layer, I used the same trick as before to turn Samus blue. Then on the top layer, I cut off the bottom half of Samus’s body (with a feathered edge) to create a gradient.

I put the text on. I’m messing with different fonts at the moment. This is “Cocogoose”, which I like a lot.

I also like mixing bold and regular weight text, and white and yellow letters, to make it a bit more interesting. This one also has a light orange gradient on the word Metroid II to evoke the original yellow-and-orange logo on the original box art.

I also put a starfield in the background. This darkened up the thumb a bit, which I like, and adds in a little texture. Plus, it’s spacey!

And there we have it. It probably took about half an hour to get right - that’s longer than most thumbnails but cutting out the artwork was a pain in the bum. But I’m pleased with how it looks - it fits the rest of the thumbs on my channel but also has its own look that matches the themes of the video itself.