Pro Minecraft Thumbnail Secrets Revealed!

Hi guys my name is Jack and today I’m going to do a tutorial on how to make minecraft thumbnails just like mine so we’re going to be doing this kind of style right here where you’ve got the 3d character and then some stuff in the background and some text over the top so

The first thing you want to do is go to this website minecraft normal skin dummy and then this is just the website which I use for creating my 3d characters so this was for a hot potato thumbnail I meant for someone but all I need to do

Is type in my exact Minecraft News named Jeff Matthew Welsh spell it correctly I think I know how to spell my own name but I don’t and you need channel turian Shepherd who’s just subscribe to me and it is case sensitive so you need to have the couple letters and then just press

ENTER and there we go here it is all you need to do is click on this thing on the side and then this will bring up your minecraft skin now this website is a bit glitchy unfortunately but there’s not much you can do about that but what I’m

Gonna do now is go to the background tab up here and I’ve actually got my own little custom background which is just a green screen which I’ll show you right here I’ll show you how to make one of these yourself if you don’t know later

On but I use this I’ll explain why a bit later on so that was just by going to the background tab and then uploading my own image so I’m going to go to the poor’s tab and then this is where I’ve got a bunch of different little pauses

And you can just pick which one of these it is that you want in your thumbnail now the one I like to use all is this one just because I think it looks it looks pretty awesome and it looks a kind of ads while my armed my leg just moved

For a second there that’s a bit weird but you can use which other one you want or if you want to like customize them a little bit more then you can move around all of these things and these are fairly self-explanatory you should be able to

Work out how to use these so you know heads rotate it that way or rotate this way you know all these different things and but to save time I am just going to use one of these default custom causes but you can easily work out how what to

Do itself so I’m going to use this one right here if I can click on it and then you’ve got these hold left and hold right functions and then all you need to do is click on one of them and then this will allow you to hold a weapon

Now in this hunger games I didn’t find a weapon and I won’t spoil it for you because it hasn’t uploaded yet but so I’m instead gonna get myself a fishing rod I guess there we go so I just clicked on the fishing rod and then now I’m holding a fishing rod however you

Know in all honesty I don’t think I even had a fishing rod in the video so I’m gonna give myself a Golden Apple instead you see it’s a it’s a little bit laggy but I think that’s just cuz I’m rendering the very bad video right now

So yeah what did I go on hold left I’m gonna give myself a Golden Apple if I can find where it is there it is and I think what kind of angle should I go for I’m actually gonna put something my other hand as well so that’s a right one

A little bit of ooh I think I’d abort in the video so I’m gonna get a board there we go oh and there’s an example of the website glitching out and it’s gone back to the default position but all you need to do is just click on these pauses

Again and it will go back to how you want there we go so now I’m just gonna position this into a area which I think will look good now I’m not sure to have it like this or like that I’m thinking this is a good angle right here now the next thing you

Do is probably ain’t much easier where to do this this is just my own method why do now is I press the Print Screen button on my keyboard then I’m gonna go over to photoshop it doesn’t matter which version you’ve got because to be honest they’re all basically the same

You need to go to file new and then you need to make sure that the dimensions are 1280 by 720 and they’re they need to be in pixels make sure this is all the same as mine as well press ok and then this is the exact size of a thumbnail so

Now I’m gonna do is just click on this set I don’t know what you call this the pointer tool I guess and I’m going to press ctrl + V now what that’s done is pasted my print screen so now I just want to cut it out so that it

Just got my character and none of this or the background stuff so I’m going to zoom in by pressing ctrl and Adly plus key and then I’m gonna get this one here this is called the marquee tool if it’s not only square by default you just hold

It down and then you drag it over to the square so now I’m just going to drag a square around my character try not to get any of the other background stuff in so now we’re going to do is press ctrl C and I’ll copy what we’ve selected and

Then press control B and then that’s past what we see see we put over here by the way guys make sure you’ve got Auto Select ticked just cuz it makes it much easier so now we’re going to select our original layer and we don’t need that anymore so we’re gonna press Delete and

We still got green and we don’t want any green so the next thing I’m gonna do is go to the magic wand tool and I’m gonna press the green thing now what this is doing it’s Alexis everything that’s green on-screen and that rhymes long and but I don’t want

Everything that’s green I want everything else that isn’t green sigh horses selects of ear and eye Christ inverse this is now selected everything else in the picture that isn’t green and I’ve just realized that we have a little bit of green there so we need to actually select that selects go back and

What we’re gonna do is we’re just hold down shift and then now we can press that if you don’t hold down shift then it’ll unselect we’ve already got selected so anyway and hopefully this is making sense I’m not very good at these tutorials yet so now I’ve pressed

Inverse again and I’m going to press ctrl C to copy and ctrl V to paste and there we go Here I am so I’m going to zoom out ctrl – key and a little tip is people I often see people making thumbnails and their character is like this big but they

Forget that when the video when it’s on YouTube the thumbnail be more this size which is just far too small to be able to see things clearly – a little top tip from the to himself is you want to just have solve heads and tarsal so if I show you

Michael Mills you see I very rarely have my entire body in frame it’s usually just my head and my torso because that’s decent size so to resize my image I’m gonna hold down control and press T and this will give us these are like a border thing

Around and you can also rotate just like doing this but we don’t really need to just yet and then what I’m going to do is hold down shift because if I don’t hold down shift when I drag him bigger I’ll get distorted so I’m just gonna

Undo that so yeah I’m gonna hold down shift and then this will keep me as my like exact dimensions but just larger if that makes sense hopefully it does and see see I’m just going to move this around a bit I’m going to go or here and

I’m think I’m gonna rotate him slightly just sways like that and that kind of looks like I’m running frantically and then once you’re happy with the size you use press ENTER and there we go so the next thing that we want is a background now on my thumbnails I like

To just use a nice little gradient type thing on most of the night anywhere just cuz it stands out a lot more than when you have like something like this although that’s quite a nice-looking thumbnail it doesn’t really stand out very much unlike what this one does see ya what we’re

Gonna do is we are going to go to Google Images and we’re just gonna type in background it’s simple as that you can actually just make these gradient backgrounds in Photoshop but I’m lazy and I just find doing this quicker so now I’m just looking for the one I want

Now this is what I want right here so I’m gonna click on it view original image and then I’m just gonna copy it by right clicking and pressing copy image then we’re gonna press the old favorite ctrl V to paste it and then we can zoom out a bit control t

To just resize it and just like that now I’m just going to press enter and we’re going to make all the tonal layers over here see see this is my face layer and this is the background so we just want the background to be underneath that so

You just have to drag it down and then place it I got and then we go so it’s starting to come together right now and I think I’m actually just going to wall tear this so the light is coming from directly behind me just because I

Think that will look a little bit better how’s that then they’ve got I think that looks better like that I might actually just resize it a little bit and just move it yeah that’s perfect price enter and then that looks like reasonably good now we can change the

Color of this by going to image at the top adjustments and then hue/saturation and then if we drag this around you see the color changes now green is a color that I find works well a lot with share you’ll notice I do use in a lot of my

Thumbnails because I just think it stands out a lot and it just look very nice but I’m just going off a Turk I see they’re just a bit different so I’ve just moved the the hue around a little bit so you just want to find a color

Which you think looks good and then you can make it a little bit more strong by changing the saturation or make it like more black and white by going back down but don’t do that because you want something that stands out like this and that just stand out a lot I think and

I’m actually just gonna change oh that’s a very strong green I’m not sure if I like that yeah let’s go for anyway so I’m gonna press ok and there we go now I’m going to select my original layer and we want him to just stand out a

Little bit so I’ve done now is I’m right clicked over here and then this is brought up the blending options and there’s a bunch of different stuff you can do with this but the one I like to do the best is stroke because this gives me a slight body see

If I change the size we’ve got like a big thick black border but I want it white so I’m just gonna click on the the color drag over to white because white is a it just looks pretty good and you don’t like too thick you don’t it too

Thin so you can’t see it either so well I’m gonna go for nine nines a pretty good one and just try to pick a depth we’re gonna add a drop shadow by taking this top one and we’re just gonna move this size up a little bit and also the

Depth and you see the desired a very very slight border it’s it’s hardly noticeable but it just it does just add that extra little bit so I think that looks pretty good like that so we’re gonna do now is get the text in because we just want Hunger Games you can have

The Minecraft font the Minecraft text the Minecraft logo that’s what I’m trying to say there if you want but to be honest I don’t think it’s necessary because if people see the thumbnail and they see the title of the video that’s got minecraft in it it’s not really

Necessary it just takes up more space what I’ve done now is I picked the text function and my computer’s being very slow which it’s not usually like this I think it’s because I’m rendering at the same time and the font I like to use is comics loud which I downloaded from

Dafont.com if you want a tutorial on how to download fonts post a comment and maybe I’ll do that for next week but all you need to do now is press when you want your text to be and type what you want your text to see so I’m just going

Off our Hunger Games this is a very nice font I think I’m just gonna position it like that by using my cursor thing and I’m actually just going to left a line at Roberts Center it just because I think that looks better in the corner

Now I’m just gonna make him out a little bit bigger so that we can add a bit more depth because if I do this and then I put the text under my character you know it’s just either that extra bit of depth so now I’m gonna do is go to my blending

Options or once again and I’m going to go to stroke and I’m gonna add the same old actually for this text I like to add a black border so we’re gonna use black and we’re gonna similar size 9 once again and then the color overlay this will change what

Color your air the the layer is so white is what always looks best I think because that just stands out the most but you want to make it a little bit more two-dimensional because depth is good so I clicked on the bevel and emboss now you can just get the size and

You can change it like that and that looks good when it’s just one level of text but when it’s two levels it makes a bit too dark so I like to just keep it on swing reasonably low just like that air because that makes it look 3d but

It’s not too much it’s not too strong look around another drop shot on this as well it’s just these minor details just add a lot to this thumbnail but that looks good just like that and then I think that looks pretty damn nifty I think that means a lot best of my love

There but it’s it’s not bad so now what I can do is just add some extra little things some items so let’s just get some random crap off my video this rendering that’s good yeah what am i doing so what I’m gonna do now is I want to get an

Abort on there so I’m just going to type into Google minecraft bought in caps locks not really necessary um but we toll on this fiberboard we want the item so we’re gonna type in micro port item and hopefully something will come up yeah that is the kind of thing and I’m

Gonna go for this one right here cuz why the hell not I’m just gonna go on view full image I’m gonna copy it over and then I’m gonna control V paste it in and there it it nope there it is let’s get that back in position again our little

Port is happy to be here so we can make it a bit bigger and we want to get rid of white border again which is very simple so we just magic wand tool select inverse control state control they easy as pie and there is my board so I had a bunch of

Boards in the video which is why I’m using them and then I’m just gonna move it around and I’m now gonna duplicate it by right-clicking I’m going to duplicate layer press ok it doesn’t matter what you call it and then I can put a little ball right here maybe make a different

Size we might actually get em I’m just gonna add a slight shuttle to this because the shuttles do look good I think the default one is fine and then you can actually just go to right-click and then copy layer and then paste let paste layer style on here and then I’ve

Just add the exact same style from this layer onto this one so I’m also gonna get some iron in guts and because I had some of them in the video I don’t really want to spoil what happens in the video Oh shout out to mr. skitty cuz he’s just

Subscribe to me and and now I’m just going to do the same again ctrl V there it is this time it’s got a black background doesn’t matter cuz we can just get rid of it hold shift select inverse hot flame lock-on too fast just pause the video if you need to which

You’re probably will cos I don’t know I’m not very good at these tutorials and things and there’s my iron delete of that and I’m just gonna copy this layer style so he’s got a nice shuttle and I’m gonna just put that behind me ever so slightly make it a bit smaller just like

That this in there and I think I’m just gonna add another one of those on the other side right over here what is it round just like that put it there like thanks good and leave that board up and there we go that is good enough for me I think not about

Thumbnail not my best but you know it’s pretty good hopefully it teaches you the basics then all you need to do is go to file save as and you need to save it as a JPEG and this is just the good font for this is the good format for YouTube

And then you just call it whatever you want boat long-press sieve and then that is ready oh yeah the options will come up I just have mine on the highest quality because why the hell not press ok and and that is ready to upload to youtube and you can save it as a

Photoshop file if you want to as well but I’m not planning on saving this because now it saves that’s all I need so go guys and I hope that you found this tutorial useful hopefully it wasn’t too bad this um hopefully you learned some basics and stuff I’m not very good

These tutorials yeah I haven’t been doing them very long but yeah that’s about it guys and give this video a like if it was helpful and I’ll probably do some more of these every Tuesday so my name is Jack and I shall see you next time