I don’t even think this struggle qualifies as a “first-world problem”. It’s like a completely fictional problem that I purposefully chose because I secretly dislike crossing a finish line.

Behold!

What is this? If you’re asking then I know you’re not one of the four people who subscribe to my YouTube channel because this is the current iteration of the thumbnail I made for my latest Star Citizen FAFO video. I’ll excuse the confusion because it’s not much to look at: just a screenshot with my arcade cabinet branding image in the corner. The original was much, much worse, but you’ll have to take my word for it because I spent about 45 minutes this morning trying to research “how to make a decent video title card-slash-video thumbnail image” and this is the fruit of my labor.

I don’t think my videos ever make it in front of unfamiliar eyeballs, so fretting over a thumbnail is pretty small potatoes. Part of learning how to do it right, though, comes pre-packaged with learning what not to do and I think that’s just as important. When it comes to making a thumbnail for a video, though, what is right and what is wrong?

There might not be an absolute in either direction, but I ended up on a channel where the guy was going through how to make effective thumbnails and title cards…for an hour and forty-five minutes! Look, I might be starting from zero here, but if takes more than 10 minutes to drop some tips, then I’ve got something better to do with my time, sorry. Some people apparently do believe there is a right way to tackle this task, and they’re going to chew your ear off if you let them.

What I do not want is this:

That’s a lot of faces, and for what, exactly? I don’t give any amount of a rat’s ass about who’s making the video. I’m never watching a video for the creator, so why are there so many fucking faces on the thumbnails? And the pointing thing? I know what I’m looking for, jackass. I don’t need your lame-ass GPS impersonation to lead me to the title.

Yeah, I hate these fucking trends so damn much. Especially that smug fucker in the lower-left corner. Fuck that guy in particular.

I digress, but this is the kind of target result I saw when looking for information on effective thumbnail strategies. All of the advice centered around “people-forward videos”, where the creator is instructing or showcasing, or blathering on about something in ways that more sensible people use blogs for. I didn’t really find any info on general purpose — maybe specifically video game related — thumbnail creation, so I have to tease out parts from the videos I could find (and could stomach) and figure out what speaks to me.

In the end, I noticed that a lot of videos didn’t even have anything super special. Maybe they had text. Maybe they had some kind of logo or brand mark, but overall I saw a lot of “very basic image card, and let YouTube show the video title” style presentations. It looks pretty weak and it still bothers me greatly, especially out of context. Barring any further, more specific advice, though, I think this is the track I’m going to have to follow for the time being.

Thing is, I do like MrAlexTech for Davinci Resolve videos, and he reminded me that I can pretty much figure out what to do and how to do it entirely from within Resolve itself.

Yeah, face card and dumbass expression notwithstanding. So I will be on the lookout for some stills I can use from the game recordings, even if I have to contrive a few. In fact, this afternoon I logged into Star Citizen and played around with the camera and emote controls, and then pushed a few segments through the Magic Mask to isolate the character. I might be able to use some of those as stills, or even the isolated video here and there.

I guess if I can’t beat ’em and don’t want to join ’em, I need to find a third way.