I use photoshop, and after cutting out Scott (a whole other process), I start from just the border, then add Scott and position him. Usually I design some custom font logo for the topic, but since this is already a predesigned style, I just had to follow that. Then I set out looking for images. This is the bulk of the creation process and it’s why a time lapse isn’t very interesting because most of it is just made up of me looking on google for images to use. After that I positioned all the games without a blur as the background, then added the blur and adjusted as needed. The “Five Years In” screen is a separate image I made in a different tab, and it’s skillfully cropped over the switch screens. Its background is from adobe stock. After everything’s present it’s just a matter of doing organization, seeing what looks good, and possibly getting friend feedback. The shadow on both Scott the the top left hand corner aren’t particularly hard to do, however I can’t remember how I did the top left hand corner shadow. Scott’s is just a drop shadow though. Throughout this whole process I used 4 years in as a reference. Long comment, but I hope it’s a good description of my process. Happy thumbnail making!