Among Us Impostor Betrayal Youtube Thumbnail
Photography, Photoshop, PaintTool SAI, Wacom Cintiq Pro 16
GOAL: Create a eye-catching thumbnail for a YouTube gaming channel video.
APPROACH: I wanted to emulate current trends in YouTube gaming including a headshot and characters in game. I wanted to capture the striking text, bold color pallettes, and zoomed-in photography of that style.
SOLUTION: I picked a moment in an online video game that I had recently played with a friend in which my friend had secretly been the bad guy all along. I captured my surprise with my headshot and bold primary color pallette, framing the action with text to create tension. The piece is the dimensions of the YouTube thumbnail specification.
Process
I wanted to capture the facecam reaction, bold text, and colors that are currently popular (as of 2021) for YouTube thumbnails. Thumbnails need to grab the user's attention as they scroll through their feed, so I wanted to create something eye-popping and vivid to do that.
First, I knew I wanted to include a "facecam" reaction of the "video". I also knew I wanted to make it based off of a popular game. I had recently placed Among Us with a group of friends online, and drew inspiration from that for this image.
Since I was going to have a lot of different assets for this design, I created a rough sketch. I also decided I wanted to use a primary color palette at this time.
Original Assets
This project included several original assets created by myself. I combined my photography, illustration, and typography skills to make this fake thumbnail.
Both of these "crewmate" images were created seperately using PaintToolSAI and my Wacom tablet.
I took a photograph of myself and touched it up with Photoshop -- removing the background and tweaking the colors. I also created original text graphics using Adobe Illustrator.
I then assembled the pieces to look like my mockup, adding logos and filling in the background with the paintbrush. Using the logo and text to frame the images came when I was moving pieces around for the final result, and it put the final touches on what I was going for.
