My Basic Youtube Thumbnail Tutorial
5My Basic Youtube Thumbnail Tutorial
Download Paint.net: http://www.getpaint.net/download.html#download
Hello Damnlag, this is Novaphyer here with my submission to Video Wars #14; The Thumbnail Tutorial.
Today, as I stated in the introduction, I'm going to teach you how to make a good Thumbnail. The program I'm going to be
using is Paint.net and there will a download link in the description and as an anotation.
Alrighty, to start off, you want to make your canvas size for the thumbnail 1280 by 720 pixels, keeping that 16 by 9 resolution.
We have to make it that big because when our youtube videos are shown on other websites, the thumbnails appear bigger
then we would normally see on youtube itself, to a maximum size of 1280 by 720.
Now, the idea of making a custom thumbnail is to create something unique that will draw in viewers, that will make them
want to click your thumbnail and that is different enough from the other content creators, if you're making a thumbnail
for an already existing game, I suggest Youtubing what other youtubers are using for their thumbnail images, and stray
away from using the same ones as they do.
There are 3 things you should generally have in a thumbnail, Text, Background and a Focal Point. A Focal Point is what
draws your viewer's attention, what they'll be mainly looking at. You want to use an image that expresses who and what
the thumbnail is about and what emotions the focal point is expressing, for my example, Styx: Master of Shadows,
my video's about both Stealth and Comedy, so I have a drawing of him both smiling and putting his finger to his mouth
to show he's trying to be quiet.
Next is the background, keep it simple and colorful, something to compliment the Focal Point itself while not destracting
from it, using only a single color is not a good suggestion when creating a background compared to either an image backdrop,
or something else that looks good. Keep it simple, but not TOO simple.
And finally, Text is the one you won't see the most of, but people generally use in their thumbnails. If you use text for other than background work, keep
it to one sentence to explain what or who the video's about, for example, the game itself. Too much text can block out the
thumbnail images itself or bore the viewer, making them not even want to click the thumbnail. But, in certain cases
lots of text can be a good thing if it ties into the Focal point itself and works with the background. Last thing about
Text is that it should be wrapped around a different color, to give it more of a popping out look, the best combinations
of colors for this are Black on White and White on Black. Don't just use plain text, wrap it in another color.
Anyways, that's it with my basic Thumbnail tutorial, just a reminder the program I'm using is Paint.net and it's free for anyone who wants to use it.
Now go forth and make Thumbnails!