User blog:ROLVeBloxxer/Bloxxer's Thumbnail Making Tutorial

I've made a YouTube tutorial on this already but it's hella outdated, so i'm gonna dump the link here.

Hello, and welcome to my tutorial on how to make Death Battle thumbnails! You probably want a Death Battle you want to see happen, and that's perfectly fine. But it's not like it's going to happen right? (and especially if not many people like your idea) So, while you're probably crying about the fact that your dream battle will never happen, you can always make a Death Battle TN of it!

I've compiled links in a Google Document, if the admins wish for it to be removed, you can always hit me up on my Discord for it. (the ID is on my profile so don't ask me on the comment section)

Let's get started!
The program I'll be using here is paint.net, otherwise known as PDN. Of course you can always use any other program like Photoshop or Powerpoint, but this tutorial is mostly centered on PDN so you're not going to be having a very good time trying to learn something here.

There's also a site called waifu2x that you can use to enlarge pictures just in case they're too small.

The links are all in this document

If the doc contains any problems according to the admins, I will have the document removed.

Templates
All of these are 960x540 pixels.

Characters
As if it wasn't obvious enough already, you're going to need two characters (or more if it's a battle royale.) For this one I'm going to be using Link (Legend of Zelda) and Zero (Mega Man X.) Search for high resolution renders and you'll be good to go. If the pictures are .png files, you're either going to want to use a custom background, colored background, or the standard Season 4 Background used in offical thumbnails.

Adding pictures in
Now, you're ready to add the pictures in. The images should be larger than the canvas size, as evident when you get this pop-up.

Outlines
There are three ways you can make outlines on your character.

Plugin
I've linked an outline plugin on the document, so you should use that as I will be using it to outline here. (And the best part about the outline plugin is, you can choose the color!)

Go to Effects > Object > Outline Object, and do as you need. Personally I keep the outlining like this.

Gaussian Blur
Duplicate a character's render, then use the magic wand to select the render's parts. You can use Ctrl to keep doing a magic wand manually. Once you've selected all of the character's parts, then you can press backspace to change the color. After that, you can

Line/Curve
This is for if you got time or not. Make an extra layer below the character and use the Line/Curve tool (Shortcut: O) to make a couple of outlines.

Character Glow
Duplicate the layer the character is in, and then use the Gaussian Blur and set it out to 4. Then go into the layer's properties and set it to overlay.

Some extra glowy shit
If you want something else to glow, like persay, Zero's eyes,  his green tits, or the crystal on his head, use the lasso select (right below rectangle select) and color the area any color you like (so long as it's transparent), and then set the blending mode to "glow"

Background
I shouldn't need to explain this one. Just find a few wallpapers of the character and do whatever the fuck you want with it, whether you wanna make it glow, make it blurry, your choice.

Finished!
Congratulations. You made it all the way to the end of a pretty much shitty and not very organized tutorial. Anyways, this is the finished product!