Twitch Stream
I had thoughts about making graphics and assets for streamers and wanted to understand what that process was like, so I made this a personal project to do. Whether or not I actually use this is debatable, but it was a fun project to design for.
Twitch (concept)
2 months
2024
Graphic Designer
Different stream layouts exist for different activities, such as drawing and gaming using a GIF avatar. Variations include the chalkboard for the supposed chat and the music player, which are different sizes depending on space. I have drawn and illustrated all of the assets.
Stream Layouts
musicplayer prinny
border for ipad
background with drawn graphics of my fav games
Chalkboard for chat
ape escape, bayonetta, disgaea, final fantasy, genshin impact, katamari, legend of zelda, paparappa, pokemon, ratchet & clank, sly cooper, tales series, toro, xenosagaI have illustrated iconic symbols from my favorite games. These are mainly used as stickers and emblems for the stream layouts and as background images. It started in Procreate, but eventually, I took it to Adobe Illustrator to make the graphics vector-based and more akin to stickers since I like collecting stickers and using them to decorate my belongings.
Graphics
Rotom electronics
rotom phoneI love listening to music and always need sound whenever I work, play, draw, and do my chores. As much as I am a visual person, I’m also an auditory person. I like to watch streams with music playing, and they have the details of the songs ready to go. Making a music player for the stream so viewers can know what music I’m listening to currently is a neat and intimate idea. Making a bounding object for the music player while making it creative and fun was also an intention of mine.
I was inspired by the Rotom phone in the latest Pokémon game, Pokémon Scarlet/Violet, and made a Prinny version of it. I like the idea of Rotom conforming to any electronic device, so I used a Prinny.
Music Player
I wanted a simple PNG that could be developed as a GIF for the avatar. One should represent gaming, and the other should represent drawing time. I had an original character in mind, but I also love cats, so I made a quick cat avatar as the first design. Then, I decided to create a 1.0 version of the avatar. A 2.0 version is in the works, introducing more of a curly hairstyle and unique garb for her look. Whether it’s an animal or a character, I decided to draw one to see the process of what that’s like.
The drawing style I thought to incorporate for a full Virtual YouTuber (VTuber) model instead of the typical VTuber style was inspired by Disgaea and Pokémon. I haven’t seen these styles take up space in the VTubing/streaming world, and I like these two games a lot, so I sought to create a character in this field. Various iterations of the character, mascot, graphics, backgrounds, and icons were considered during the initial phases of this project.
Avatars
concept sketches of the Avatar 2.0
At the time, I played a lot of Genshin Impact for the story and visuals, and I liked a lot of the UI presented. Since one of the games that would’ve been streamed was Genshin, I decided to make the accents and graphics more resemble Genshin.
The main goal was to recreate their UI assets and make them sharper, vector-based, and ready for use on the stream. Muted colors were determined to place less emphasis on these assets but still create a good bounding box for the text to lie in.
Accents
Twitch’s layout includes banners that act as headers and links to the information provided by the streamer. I chose my favorite game characters from those franchises with my stickers' theme. Taking pre-existing images and assets of these characters was a thought I had in mind to understand the retouching and repainting process, like the shadows and the accessories of the characters like the flames and confetti.
Eventually, I could make the banners from scratch, but I decided to go in this direction just for the sake of the project and learning the process behind the goals.
Banners
LOOKING AHEAD
Retrospective
HOW COULD THESE DESIGNS HAVE BEEN IMPROVED?
Since it’s more of a passion project, if I were to have a specific theme in mind for the avatar, making it closely relate to the avatar and each other would be a vast improvement visually and cohesively. But since it’s mainly to incorporate things that I love, they all relate to me in a way.
Being a small passion project to work on to understand designing in the streaming world was a lot of fun. I think expanding on this project, making a starting soon and ending scene and making more illustration to design the layouts would be the next step.
Project takeaways.
Trying something new— I haven’t considered designing for a stream, but I know streamers and YouTubers are on the rise in the entertainment and media industry. So, I decided to try it out and see how I could solve problems while also learning how to use OBS and how assets can be implemented.
Iteration Design is crucial— Continuous iterations were essential to figure out the UI of the assets and graphics. Using different applications and creating different versions of these designs helped me determine the best route to meet the needs and expectations of the stream layouts.
