Q: What makes an Artstation thumbnail look good?

Har

Hi fellow polycounters,

I’m doing a bit of research about thumbnails on Artstation and have some questions on how you think what’s most important for a thumbnail.

I will use this info for a small test on school to create an image that should stand out on a predefined Artstation page and should be selected by the test persons without them knowing that that image was actually manipulated.

The questions:

1. What makes a good thumbnail?
2. Are general composition/design rules valid for thumbnails? Or can they be ignored to stand out when compared to the other images that do follow general rules?
3. What makes a thumbnail standout?
4. When looking at Artstation, is it the colors, the composition or the actual shape of the thing that makes you click on it?

Thanks in advance.

ExcessiveZero

Really you should youtube some tutorials on composition this is a whole subject in itself for the first 3, the last two though are bound to vary due to personal taste, I notice I personally have liked a lot more hard surface buildings and well textured stuff above all, probably because I love sci fi, and am interested most in environment art.

PyrZern

You should head over to artstation and pick a few awesome artists. Go to their "Likes' tab and browse thru their thumbnails. :P 

For me, I like characters. Face up close, or half body bust. Usually posed, or nice skin shader or awesome face details. Mostly textured.

Jonas Ronnegard

After uploading, look at the wall of thumbnails and see if you feel that yours stands out, feels interesting etc, 
the thumbnail only needs to get the viewers interest, it doesn't need to tell the whole story, that will be available after they press the thumbnail.
Actually it might even be good sometimes to hold back, maybe zoom in on a detail of your mesh that is extra interesting and have that as your thumbnail,
might make people want to click on your work to see the whole thing. But in the end we all like different things we can only try to adjust to the audience we want to attract.

Har

Thanks for the feedback guys, I will have a look on youtube and check some awesome Artstation artists out and figure out what to do.

Neox

An ugly bright green frame around some well made but super boring shotgun.

Will_M

I guess the piece of artwork's composition has to look good when shrunk. At least that's what catches my eye. 

Daew

Well, I think this is a good summary   Not that it's wrong or anything

(this is kinda spoilery and takes a bit away from the experience. So if you want the full experience go here www.artstation.com/artist/thomaswievegg  and click the dark orange thumbnail, you'll know what i'm talking about. )

otherwise
Thumbnail

PyrZern

Daew said:

Well, I think this is a good summary   Not that it's wrong or anything

(this is kinda spoilery and takes a bit away from the experience. So if you want the full experience go here www.artstation.com/artist/thomaswievegg  and click the dark orange thumbnail, you'll know what i'm talking about. )

otherwise
Thumbnail

That is good :P 

Neox

Erik Rading said:

Neox said:

An ugly bright green frame around some well made but super boring shotgun.

Thank you

i really hope this doesn't become a trend, it would kill artstation, if that is what custom icons lead to, I'd rather go back to only cropping

Chris Krüger

- Value contrast
- Colour contrast
- "Quick read"
- Personal taste and interest

Har

Neox said:

An ugly bright green frame around some well made but super boring shotgun.

Ive seen that one :P.

Will_M said:

I guess the piece of artwork's composition has to look good when shrunk. At least that's what catches my eye. 

Aye, I think so too.

Neox said:

Erik Rading said:

Neox said:

An ugly bright green frame around some well made but super boring shotgun.

Thank you

i really hope this doesn't become a trend, it would kill artstation, if that is what custom icons lead to, I'd rather go back to only cropping

If it would become a trend it would'nt be special or stand out any more.

Daew said:

Well, I think this is a good summary   Not that it's wrong or anything

(this is kinda spoilery and takes a bit away from the experience. So if you want the full experience go here www.artstation.com/artist/thomaswievegg  and click the dark orange thumbnail, you'll know what i'm talking about. )

otherwise
Thumbnail

Yeah, that is some real click bait. That artist makes good thumbnails. Thanks for linking that .

Chris Krüger said:

- Value contrast
- Colour contrast
- "Quick read"
- Personal taste and interest

Yeah that sums it all up pretty much I think. Thanks .

RogerP

BOOBS!

Har

RogerP said:

BOOBS!

Yeah, sex sells. But that would rule out women I believe. (I think they don't look at boobs the same as men :P).

RogerP

Har said:

RogerP said:

BOOBS!

Yeah, sex sells. But that would rule out women I believe. (I think they don't look at boobs the same as men :P).

Jokes aside, I think it is different for everyone. For me I think that the first thing that grabs my attention is color, then if I'm not interested in the subject matter I'll keep looking. I tend to click more on the ones that show more of a complete character/scene than the ones that try to zoom in on a specific part. (i.e. instead of a full face, zooming in on the eye)

thomasp

RogerP said:

BOOBS!

try combining them with an ugly bright green frame for extra win.

btw. you can filter art station. i never look at shotguns for some reason. boobs though....

Will_M

RogerP said:

BOOBS!

o: lewd

Spoon

From just reading the title, the obvious answer for clickbait seems to be sex. 

I've noticed the music mixes I listen to on youtube, even when they contain the exact same music and level of mixing skills, the one with a semi naked girl on the thumbnails has 20x the viewers as the one with a mixerpult\speaker\dj logo etc.

Maybe it's different on artstation, I dont know. 

Blaisoid

why would it be different? humans are humans regardless of place. that's precisely why clickbaits work to begin with.
It's not just boobs though, I'm pretty sure that female portraits tend to get more attention as well.

Jonas Ronnegard

not sure about anyone others but I would avoid "sex" if you want as many people as possible to watch your work, many artist check artstation at work etc and might have to skip it, also if it's something too mature you need the mature thumbnail, 

slosh

Um, don't worry about the thumbnail...make awesome art and your thumbnail will be just fine...

Blaisoid

I dunno about that, considering that each week I find amazing artists who's work barely gets any attention.

Maybe it's not just thumbnails... To be honest sometimes I have no idea why some works or artists sneak below people's radars.
Usually I can see why something is not popular, but sometimes I stumble upon something where I just can't comprehend why it got zero attention.

And at the same time there's quite a few artworks which are mediocre but somehow very popular.
Is it just luck? Oversaturation? Amount of artist friends? No idea.

Then there's also other factors, such as the name magic - assets from well known games get much more popular than assets of same quality made for small games or portfolio.
And fanart magic, which probably doesn't require an explaination.

Perhaps a great looking thumbnail won't turn shitty art into gold - but unless you already have plenty of followers who will check out and like everything that you make I wouldn't ignore this aspect.

PyrZern

This is DrawCrowd, but :P 

Har

Blaisoid said:

I dunno about that, considering that each week I find amazing artists who's work barely gets any attention.

Maybe it's not just thumbnails... To be honest sometimes I have no idea why some works or artists sneak below people's radars.
Usually I can see why something is not popular, but sometimes I stumble upon something where I just can't comprehend why it got zero attention.

And at the same time there's quite a few artworks which are mediocre but somehow very popular.
Is it just luck? Oversaturation? Amount of artist friends? No idea.

Then there's also other factors, such as the name magic - assets from well known games get much more popular than assets of same quality made for small games or portfolio.
And fanart magic, which probably doesn't require an explaination.

Perhaps a great looking thumbnail won't turn shitty art into gold - but unless you already have plenty of followers who will check out and like everything that you make I wouldn't ignore this aspect.

I think its a combination of luck, lots of followers, friends or some network and very good work / art.

PyrZern said:

This is DrawCrowd, but :P 

I bet a lot people clicked on those :P.
I just went to DrawCrowd but that site is for 90% filled with female drawings like that. I guess that site has a different kind of public.

slosh

There's a lot that plays into it sure but I guarantee that if you or anyone continues to make quality art, the thumbnail won't matter.  But if you really want to overthink it, you can look at composition of other people's thumbnails and drive yourself mad.

Jonas Ronnegard

well good art does a lot, but a lot of things come into play, I also find a lot of work that is awsome but sometimes doesn't even have 1 like,

time of upload can do a lot, as well as getting those first likes so you come high up on the trending list from the beginning, and yeah thumbnail does matter,
but in the long run if it's good art it will get attention, a slow but steady flow.

Joopson

slosh said:

Um, don't worry about the thumbnail...make awesome art and your thumbnail will be just fine...

This is definitely the most important thing.
Like others have said, thumbnail, time of upload, type of art, etc, can all greatly affect popularity. Characters are almost always more popular than environments, for instance.

But in my opinion, focus on making good art. And once you do, you can worry about getting all the other stuff right.

Har

Thanks for all the response guys!

I conducted my test with 12 persons and used 10 pages of thumbnails from Artstation. On every page they had to select one thumbnail and say why they chose that particular thumbnail. Each page consisted of 50 trending thumbnails, so for every person I got 10 results.

I came to the following conclusions:

• Know your audience, everyone has their own interests and not everyone will look at the same work. However men and women can have the same interests as it was proven in my school research. (I must say I didn't do a large scale test so real world results may vary);
• Thumbnails with a clear contrast have a higher chance to be clicked on than thumbnails which don't;
• Detailed sculpts even if they are grey can also be interesting as long as their quality is good;
• Thumbnails with a mysterious atmosphere or with a story catch the attention and are more likely to be clicked on then ones which don't have a background or have only just a model in them;
• A close-up or a total shot can both be interesting depending on what's going on in the thumbnail. When showing a human or a creature it should have a visible face to be easily recognizable;
• Adding a green border on a good but boring shotgun model does work slightly, only one of the test persons wanted to click on it or actually noticed the image. But.. if every one would do that Artstation would become a mess in my opinion, so as long as only a very select group does that we should be fine.