05-31-2014, 04:34 PM
It's all a question of experience. The more you have the better you get at eyeballing things like perspective and scale in thumbnails. Setting up a proper grid is fine for the final piece, but you can still pretty quickly draw in a few guides for yourself for each thumbnail that will work as an approximation. A line for the horizon, the vps you want and a few lines to give you a general grid. If you have a perspective brush, you can use that to help you create a grid quickly. It's just a brush of radial spokes, slap a couple of stamps of it on different layers and move around, and instant 2pt perspective.
You don't really even need to focus on perspective if you don't want as long as you have a nice balance of values and composition and have an idea what the perspective is. Of course the more you can put in, in terms of legibility of the thumbnail, the better it will be to inform you what the final would look like and which one to pick.
The thumbnail is a shorthand, to iron out the main issues so you're not constantly changing things in the render phase. If you haven't solved the composition, or nailed the value balance, or if the thumbnail doesn't look like anything, then you probably haven't done enough work on it.
Speed comes with practice. The idea is to be able to thumbnail quickly...maybe one every ten minutes or even less, but I would say just take your time first to get a feel. Try different techniques and see what works best for you. Concentrate on solving the main issues in each one, without focusing on too much detail, but so it still reads well and is understandable. The tendency when new to it, is to work too quickly and too sloppily and end up with a messy scribbly mush. The goal is to work accurately, but simply, in broad shapes and values. Figures should be accurate in gesture and proportion, not just stick figures for example. It's not a shorthand impressionistic thing, it's a mini accurate reproduction. Work at small sizes and zoomed out to stop you getting bogged down by detail and maintain the initial overall read of the thumb. Try using lasso tools and gradients to lay down accurate shapes and experiment with gradients to show value shifts easily. Try brushes with 100 percent opacity with no pressure on. Maybe do a quick sketch and then slap in some value underneath it, or work with 3 or 4 layers for foreground, midground, background to allow you to move things around quicker. It's all fun and games and experimentation!
You don't really even need to focus on perspective if you don't want as long as you have a nice balance of values and composition and have an idea what the perspective is. Of course the more you can put in, in terms of legibility of the thumbnail, the better it will be to inform you what the final would look like and which one to pick.
The thumbnail is a shorthand, to iron out the main issues so you're not constantly changing things in the render phase. If you haven't solved the composition, or nailed the value balance, or if the thumbnail doesn't look like anything, then you probably haven't done enough work on it.
Speed comes with practice. The idea is to be able to thumbnail quickly...maybe one every ten minutes or even less, but I would say just take your time first to get a feel. Try different techniques and see what works best for you. Concentrate on solving the main issues in each one, without focusing on too much detail, but so it still reads well and is understandable. The tendency when new to it, is to work too quickly and too sloppily and end up with a messy scribbly mush. The goal is to work accurately, but simply, in broad shapes and values. Figures should be accurate in gesture and proportion, not just stick figures for example. It's not a shorthand impressionistic thing, it's a mini accurate reproduction. Work at small sizes and zoomed out to stop you getting bogged down by detail and maintain the initial overall read of the thumb. Try using lasso tools and gradients to lay down accurate shapes and experiment with gradients to show value shifts easily. Try brushes with 100 percent opacity with no pressure on. Maybe do a quick sketch and then slap in some value underneath it, or work with 3 or 4 layers for foreground, midground, background to allow you to move things around quicker. It's all fun and games and experimentation!