Martsie vs Android 21 Update (Thumbnail #2 Complete)

hey hey everyone! i just finished up thumbnail 2 and I wanted to show you all how it came out

what do you think? pretty neat huh?

i'll post a high quality version of it here when the project comes out, but yeah i really like how this ended up looking! Thumbnail 3 will be the next one to get finished as it's already almost done and Thumbnail 1 is still in its early stages since it's the bigger piece and requires 13 poses.

How This Idea Came To Me

As you guys know, the thumbnail is a remake of the historic "Oh? You're approaching me?" JoJo meme from 2019, but the question here is...

How and why the heck did you want to make this, Vymii?

Well, my plan with the thumbnails was for all of them to be different from each other while still being relevant to the project, so i gave each thumbnail a specific role.

Thumbnail 1: (Main Thumbnail) - This one's meant to tell a story and look a little chaotic to show that the battle is basically built off anger/jealous emotion (mainly from Android 21)

Thumbnail 2: (Meme Thumbnail) - This one's for the memers. One that is pretty silly and has a meme that is super easy to recognize.

Thumbnail 3: (Fanservice Thumbnail) - This one's for the crowd who likes the spice. The "men of culture", the lewd lovers, the gooners, whatever you wanna call them xD (But ofc it's gotta be safe enough for YouTube)

So after I assigned the thumbnail roles, I immediately went straight to working on ideas for Thumbnail 2 since I felt like it would be the easiest & quickest one to figure out and put together. I thought of many memes like the Vegeta thumb, and the Over 9000, and even obvious stuff like the Yamcha pose, but I felt like most of those were either overused or didn't fit the vibe of the characters well enough, or both. Sooo I started thinking outside of Dragon Ball and literally it hit me like BOOM! The Jojo meme!

After I had the meme chosen, I envisioned which characters I wanted to be in which spot. I originally was gonna have Martsie be in the place of Dio (on the left) because it would've given us a nice butt shot xD but I saw that the original meme gave Dio a fierce, fiery blue aura and gave Jotaro a more calm, shiny bright aura and I made the decision to swap the two. Fierce aura for Android 21, bright shiny aura from Martsie. I think it was a good decision! #RIPButtShot

How The Idea Came To Life

After I had the idea planned out, I went to the artist with the details and commissioned him to draw just the girls. Luckily for me, he was kind enough to also add in the terrain that they're walking on. I was just gonna take the Cell Games Arena floor and edit it into the picture but this made things a little easier for me :D

So he got to work, sketched it out, lined, colored, etc., and sent it my way when it was done. It looked great! And now it was time for me to add to it in Photoshop.

While working in Photoshop, I had the Jojo meme open in a separate tab so I could use it as a heavy reference while starting off, and then eventually change stuff up as I went on. I added in the blue text from the meme, made some cuts around them so that parts of the characters can overlap over them. Then I took Martsie and moved her a bit closer & scaled her up. The rule of thirds chart was in mind and I figured I should bring her closer to that imaginary vertical line.

Then I went in an old folder of mine where I had Dokkan game assets (from Dragon Ball Z Dokkan Battle) and I added in the streaks around Martsie and the little rocks around their feet (Fun Fact: There are 51 layers of rocks used in this lmao). After that, I felt like the yellow background was missing something, so I took the blue JoJo text, put it behind the girls, and blended it into the background with some layer blending, feathering, gaussian blur, and opacity knobs (not in that order). Last thing from there was to play around with the colors! And after individually experimenting with the colors, exposure, levels, contrast, etc., I ended up with the thumbnail you see there!

I spent about 2-3 hours on it all, which is the longest time i've spent editing one picture lmao, but it was time well spent. I like it! Thumbnail 3 will be done next!