33 - Vlad

Vlad is a 21-year-old thumbnail designer from Klintsy, a small town in Russia. Alongside his work in design, he is also studying at university to become a data analyst.

He began his creative journey five years ago as an editor in the design community, where he published various materials for designers. From there, he moved into 3D modeling related to CS:GO and later explored content creation as a YouTuber focused on the same game.

Today, he works with YouTubers and creates thumbnails for their content. Vlad is available for hire.

Twitter (X) → x.com/vladdesigner

Andrew was looking for a designer who could take a more creative approach to thumbnail design, so we created a thumbnail for one of his older videos.

The video tells the story of how he ended up on a deserted island unprepared and survived there for three days. I wanted to find a more interesting angle, so it wouldn’t feel like just another thumbnail of a man on an island. The goal was to convey the scale of the island while also showing that Andrew had already settled in there. (I think that came across successfully.)

I started by looking at thumbnails featuring people with a similar look, along with movie stills and stock photos centered around survival and island themes. I also drew inspiration from movie frames and stock imagery throughout the process.

The only material I had to work with was this photo of Andrew.

I started by writing prompts and generating images that fit the direction I had in mind, using Nano Banana Pro, Seedream 5, Ideogram, and occasionally Flux. It took many, many generations to get there.

I went through many generations and narrowed them down to four options, eventually choosing the second as the foundation for the thumbnail. Since I wanted to emphasize the scale of the entire island, that option felt like the strongest starting point.

I used two generations as the foundation.

From the first, I took the upper part of the island.

From the second, I used the lower part as the background.

I cleaned up the background, adjusted the size of the raft, and merged the two images. Then I removed any unnecessary or distracting details.

After that, I made some minor color corrections and replaced his face, since he didn’t really look like himself in the original AI generated image. I also preferred his expression of fatigue, which I think works better here.

After that, I ran a “Remix” through Ideogram, which helped smooth out any uneven areas, refine the textures, and make the image feel softer and more polished.

The final stage was color correction and upscaling. For that, I use Magnific, which I consider one of the best tools for creating detailed, realistic textures.

The entire thumbnail took about two hours to complete, from the initial idea to the final version. I’m really happy with the result and consider it one of my best thumbnails in recent times.

If you found this edition of Unlayered helpful, please consider sharing it with someone who might benefit from this workflow too! 💙