64 - Afonichev

Daniil Afonichev is 21, from Russia, and has been using Photoshop since the age of 12. The first four years went into Minecraft design work, with creative photo edits on the side just for the fun of it. Then a photo edit of ExileShow, made purely for fun, got noticed. ExileShow commissioned another piece and posted it on Instagram with a credit, and that's how Daniil got a name and started making thumbnails.

These days Daniil works with YouTube channels of all sizes, including ExileShow (6.51M), A4 (92M), Kenyi Nakamura (8.9M), FixEye (11.9M), Lael Hansen (1.3M), Warpath Tesla (4.4M) and Chuck Review (1.5M). Daniil is available for hire.

Twitter (X) → x.com/afonichevv
YT Jobs → ytjobs.co/talent/profile/362235

Chuck is one of my long-term clients, and we work closely together on every thumbnail. We make them together, with both of us contributing. Sometimes we rework a concept to get the best result. By now, I know what he's looking for, and he knows what I can do. He asks for my input on the best way to bring an idea to life.

I used to watch Chuck's videos when I was a kid. In 2020, when I was 15, I reached out on Instagram about working together, but he didn't reply. In 2022, he contacted me himself: I was working with a friend of his, who recommended me as a designer. We've been working together since June 25, 2022, and we've made almost every thumbnail on his channel together since then.

We don't look at other people's thumbnails while we work. We create our own thing without chasing trends, and we've developed our own style over the years.

The thumbnail we're breaking down today is for Chuck Review's "Animated Soap" series. In this series, Chuck reviews animation, whether it's a series, a movie, or something similar. He covers how it started, what it's about, and where the story has ended up by the time he makes the video.

I'd made the thumbnails for the recent episodes, so this was a familiar job for me. I already knew how to approach it.

This video was a review of The Amazing Digital Circus. Chuck gave me a quick idea without going into too much detail: "Basically, I'm in the middle choking the rabbit. Remove the yellow hand, change the background, and put the other characters from the show around us." He also sent me stills and images from the show, along with a photo of himself.

First, I edited Chuck so he was choking the rabbit character, using the image he'd sent as an AI reference. It took quite a few attempts to get it right. I needed to keep the rabbit recognizable and make it look believable, as if Chuck were actually holding him by the neck. Once I had a generation that was close enough, I resized it and fitted it to Chuck's original photo.

Then I started building the composition. With Chuck, I make a rough layout first. I used to struggle with thumbnails like this because there were so many characters, and I didn't know where to put everyone. Now I can build the composition pretty quickly and work out where each character should go to make it feel dimensional and interesting.

For this kind of thumbnail, every character needs to stay recognizable and easy to read, without blocking the others. I create depth by varying their sizes and placing them on different planes: some large in the foreground, others further back. Chuck is always the central focus and the first person you notice, because he's the face of the channel. We also use the Chuck Review logo on every thumbnail. Sometimes I place it as a separate element; other times I work it into an object, like a character's hat.

I sent the composition to Chuck for approval to see whether he liked it or wanted changes. He liked it, so I kept going.

Once the composition is set, I choose the background. For Chuck's thumbnails, I always want the background to capture the atmosphere of the show or movie. I sometimes spend quite a while choosing it and end up using an unusual frame. This time, I picked a pretty odd-looking shot and asked AI to remove the unwanted objects, leaving just the background. Photoshop's Generative Fill is usually enough, but removing everything here was too complicated, so I used Nano Banana 2.

Here's how the background and composition came together.

After that, I ran each source image through Magnific's upscaler separately. I'm still not sure how noticeable the difference is in a thumbnail, haha.

Then came my least favorite part: matching the color and lighting of every character using Camera Raw.

Here, I used Photoshop's Harmonize feature and also edited the source image manually. The lighting was quite tricky this time, so this part took some work.

Once I had that result, I started using AI to adjust the lighting and atmosphere.

This is a delicate process for me. The characters need to stay believable and recognizable, but I also want the image to look good. I paint with black on the layer mask of the AI lighting layer in Photoshop to hide areas where AI has changed too much from the original. I tried lots of prompts and generated around 20 lighting variations. I picked three and combined them in Photoshop, taking the best parts of each.

Then I added the finishing touches and did the final color grading. I sent it straight to the client, and it was approved without any changes. That was the thumbnail finished!

Communication: Discord / WhatsApp / Telegram
AI: Magnific / ChatGPT / Stable Diffusion
Editing: Photoshop
Hands: My own two hands

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