Thumbnail Art

One of the requirements of this project was to make thumbnail sketches to practise form, tone and shape for influencing a design leading to the final design. Typically thumbnail sketches are silhouettes of the thing they are trying to represent with some grey scale shading after the shape has taken form. I however decided to take time with my thumbnails and flesh them out into little pocket sketches of the some possible directions I could take my design.

I made this set of ten thumbnails initially. Making each one step by step using the percentile grey scale swatches in Photoshop, typically with the lightest value being 20% and the darkest being around 80%, I began to appreciate and understand how light reacts to an object, like a building, much more than I did before this exercise. 

I made these over the course of a few days and I think it shows as I placed a lot of effort not to just make these thumbnail sketches with basic shapes and/or silhouettes but to also add character to the scenes they represent; such as the more church like mill thumbnail 2nd from the bottom on the right I tried, and I feel like I succeeded, to make the scene feel ominous, with the imposing structure before you and lightning crashing down in the background.

I'm really pleased with how these turned out, I am particularly fond of the top 3 and indeed I enjoyed the design 2nd down on the left enough that I decided to carry it over to make my final piece.

To improve I feel as though there needs to be a greater contrast of shades in the grey's to make the structures themselves stand out more.

Afterward I was pleased enough with how my initial thumbnails turned out that I decided to expand and create a couple more. Again I do like how these turned out, they aren't as atmospheric as the initial eight I made however I do think they are interesting enough to sit alongside them.

For the top thumbnail I wanted to give this feeling of the mill itself being on a cliff face with little ground beneath and around it and requiring a bridge to access the mill. I also wanted to practise with a little graphic novel/Sin City art style by adding a singular colour to the scene among the grey scale, and I did this with the water spewing out from the wheel. I would say that the top thumbnail is one of the weaker designs and executions among my thumbnails however I do still think it came out ok.

For the bottom thumbnail I wanted this cabin in the woods feeling, similar to the the top left thumbnail of my initial thumbnails. The idea is the it's within a clearing within a forest and that the structure off to the left of the building has focused a channel or gully into a single stream to move the mill wheel, with the stream that it would have initially flowed into present.

This is one of my favourites of my thumbnails, I appreciate the simplicity of the design however it isn't too game like, or at least game like enough within its aesthetic for me to choose it over my other thumbnail designs; some of which have a Fable vibe to there style which I was going for in a few.