37 - Sarim

Abdul Samad Sarim is a 20-year-old thumbnail designer based in Pakistan. Growing up, he always had an appreciation for art and loved to translate his ideas into sketches. And when he was 14, he discovered Photoshop, which, unknown to him, marked the beginning of his journey.

From the ages of 14 to 18, he made posters and art for fun. But after turning 18, he approached Photoshop in a more professional manner and started designing thumbnails.

He was featured previously on Unlayered #31 – which was another weekly challenge win for him. Sarim is available for hire.

Twitter (X) → x.com/AbdulSamadhere

Hello everyone!

So this was the brief for Thumbnails101 Weekly Challenge #45. The main premise of the brief was that this was the craziest and wildest robbery yet, so the thumbnail needed to reflect that.

Now, for a robbery like this to make sense, whatever gets stolen has to be something truly untouchable or highly valued, which I thought could be the Mona Lisa, the British Crown Jewels, or a country's nuclear codes. And out of all three, nuclear codes stood out as the most insane thing to steal.

The asset provided for the brief was of a masked robber who needed to be shown in the thumbnail. So I started conceptualizing based on the asset provided. From there, I came up with three ways the thumbnail could go:

I ended up going with option three, and here's why. 

I remembered a banger video by LabCoatz where he recreates the Coca-Cola recipe, and the thumbnail showed the end result. Because when someone claims and shows they have the answer to a complex thing, you immediately want to know the process. (Reminds me of my math classes 😭)

A popular Twitch streamer and YouTuber Ludwig confirmed this here: This YouTuber Is in Big Trouble

So, with a clear idea, I moved towards sketching it out, which was pretty straightforward. I wanted to go with a simple look of a guy, heavily injured and bandaged after stealing the nuclear codes, sitting at a table with the nuclear briefcase.

Then I used the sketch as an image reference in Nano Banana Pro to generate a base image in photorealistic style.

The base AI image asset was quite promising, so the next step was refining it. Now, remember how the brief required the original asset to be used? So I swapped it out to match the masked robber from the asset.

Then I started adding some wear and tear. Bruises, a bit of blood, and slightly torn threads, not overdone, just enough to tell a story that the guy had been through something, which makes the whole scene more believable. Overpolished thumbnails can sometimes work against you.

After that, I made a couple of swaps to give the thumbnail more context and weight. The keyboard became the American flag to represent the USA nuclear codes, and a Chinese flag was added on the left. Because nobody would steal nuclear codes just for fun. There has to be a motive.

Now came the editing side of things. The nuclear icon was made fully black with a yellow screen since the thumbnail needed more color and was feeling a little flat. 

Some contrast work, dodging and burning was done to bring out the depth, and the screen was made bright enough to cast yellow light onto the flag below it.

Then some texture overlays and a run through the filter gallery to tie everything together, and that was pretty much it. These few changes really helped elevate the look and gave it a final cohesive feel.

Overall, I was quite happy with how the final thumbnail came out. 😀

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