26th April 2013: Optimisation Part 3

In the previous post I identified three problems, and a potential solution and drawback for each. In the next couple of posts I'll be running over any processes I went through to producing the solution, and then measuring it's success.

Creating thumbnails (reminder)
Problem: Acquiring a screenshot for each individual parts thumbnail is incredibly time consuming
Solution: Have the same thumbnail for every part in a series
Drawback: Thumbnails won't be visual pinpoints of where abouts in the game the part takes place

I approached this by looking at a few different thumbnail designs by top Let's Players and from that, came up with a basis for my own. Here are some notes I made:

As a thumbnail, everything should be visible from a small size.
In the top left I'll have the game title, it'll vary from series to series of course. In the bottom left the part of the series will be displayed, numbers should be adjustable from image to image.
On the right, the games main character(s).
The background I will try and make as exciting as possible but it should not distract from the foreground... so a fairly simple design overall.

Using this method has resulted in thumbnails that look clearer, are more consistent, and are far far more professional than I had hoped for (I'd not done much image editing prior to this), it's also dramatically cut down on the time it takes to produce thumbnails as it'd take me approximately 20 to 40 minutes per each thumbnail with the previous method, and I've managed to have every thumbnail across all my videos done in pretty much 15 to 20 hours with this new method. The originally identified drawback is HUGELY outweighed by the advantages, enough said, next problem!