63 - Jatin

Jatin is a 23-year-old thumbnail designer from India. He started designing thumbnails in late 2023, when his university assigned him a freelance project as part of a subject requirement.

These days he works with a YouTube agency called One Billion Media, along with a few independent clients. Jatin is available for hire.

Twitter (X) → x.com/jatin_dzn
Website → jatindzn.framer.website

The morning I designed this thumbnail, I saw an Instagram post about how Zendaya was having a successful year with back-to-back hits. Since I had no new thumbnails to post that day, I decided to create a practice thumbnail on this topic.

The main idea was to feature Zendaya alongside the movie posters for The Odyssey, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, and the upcoming Dune: Part Three.

I started scrolling Pinterest for inspiration and came across a Severance poster featuring a subject behind elevator gates. That sparked the idea of placing Zendaya in a similar visual. I scrolled more and saw the Johnny English poster, which inspired me to place her behind a wall of movie posters.

Initially, I wanted to give the posters a digital sci-fi screen effect, so I saved a Spotify widget trend as a reference.

I opened Blender and quickly made a composition with a subject positioned behind a wall on the left side. I then gave it to ChatGPT along with Zendaya's headshot and prompted it to generate an image based on the references.

I took it into Photoshop and started creating a Spotify-style widget, but soon realized that the sci-fi screen idea didn't match the overall vibe. After giving it some thought, I came up with the idea of making the scene look like a theater. I generated a wall image with three empty poster frames and replaced the original wall in Photoshop.

Next, I added the three posters and blended them into the frames. I retouched Zendaya's face and added a red theatrical curtain behind her to fill the empty space.

Then I removed the name plates and added the text "TAKING OVER", which in my opinion works really well and makes the concept easier to understand at first glance. I blended the text slightly so it wouldn't look like it was floating. I also experimented with different words and styles, but eventually decided to keep it simple.

Finally, I added some finishing touches, including a light ray, some glow, depth, and a touch of everyone's favorite Camera Raw Filter.

Communication: X / Discord / WhatsApp
Editing: Photoshop
AI: ChatGPT / Claude

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