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Hiring a channel artist can be beneficial to you as a streamer

Hello there, and welcome to Streamer’s Haven, your source of live streaming and content creation information. In this article, I’m going to be going over the concept of hiring a channel artist to create visual assets for your channel, and why you may want to do this as a live Streamer or YouTuber. These assets are, of course, optional, but they tend to act as a sort of visual representation of your channel’s brand.

Out of the gate, I want to stress this point – I do not recommend getting custom assets for your channel, outside of channel emotes and a logo if you have only been streaming for a year or so. Even then, they are secondary to the content that you create. As many individuals have learned over the years, emotes and a good logo Won’t make your audience grow – The content that you create, and how you interact with people will. For many, the pre-fabricated assets provided by places like Own3D, NerdorDie, and StreamLabs are plenty, but at the end of the day, are not unique.

Getting unique assets that will set your channel apart from other streamers, but ultimately will not dictate the success of your channel.

Create assets yourself first – Hire a channel artist later

Fun Fact Tombstone channel art dei
It is meant to be a Tombstone, and I would have my audience spam it whenever I died in a game; “Fun Fact, I’m dead!”

Before you hire anybody, I strongly recommend taking a shot at creating your own assets – Even if that means you are only using Text to do it. I’ve seen plenty of individuals with emotes like “God” “Mode” “Engaged”. Nothing fancy, and their audience utilized them a ton!

In fact, I made my own emotes, logo, and pretty much every asset on my stream when I actively took part in live streaming. I am a strong proponent of “Do it Yourself”, and will try before turning to somebody else. The emote on the Left, and the one further down on the right are emotes that I made myself. They aren’t super professional in quality, but they get the job done.

In case your wondering about the origin of the emote on the left there, it is from an old habit that seeped into my content. I would say “Fun fact, Something something something…”. In the case of the logo, I had died in a game, so I said “Fun Fact, I’m dead!” And then the idea to make a gravestone looking emote with “Fun fact” on it. A sort of “Famous Last words”.

Having an event or something you say often is usually a good subject to make an emote on. Those who know the origin of the emote will experience some nostalgia whenever it pops up.

As for the “Accessible?” design, that stemmed from the fact that I am a disabled individual. My name even pays homage to this. See, “Mr. Goodhand” refers to my disability of being a stroke victim. You can read the story about that on our about page.

I don't consider myself a channel artist
I made this emote using a modified version of the Accessibility logo, as I am a disabled individual

My channel’s whole premise was my attempt to inspire other disabled individuals into challenging themselves to do the things they really want to do. You would be surprised what you can do when you set your mind to it. The “Accessible?” emote with the question mark meant “Disabled? So what, I’m gonna do it anyway!”

The process of inspiring people is something I really enjoyed about my channel. Try to find something that your audience latches onto and define it in your channel.

Want to be your own channel artist?

Think your art skills are up to the challenge? Here are a few resources to get you started.


Free Art programs

  • GIMP – 2d Design comparable to Photoshop. A bit more complicated to use than photoshop, but a great free alternative.
  • Inkscape – a Free Vector image design program; Infinite scalability from one image. Creates .SVG files.
  • Blender – A Free 3D design program with a TON of features and support available. Use with GIMP for UV mapping textures onto your models.

Paid Art Programs

  • Adobe Photoshop – The paid alternative to GIMP, and an industry standard. This is a very powerful program for any channel artist.
  • Adobe After Effects – Used to create Visual FX animations seen in the various streaming scenes, as well as animated logos.
  • Adobe Illustrator – The Inkscape paid solution, and an industry standard. It is highly intuitive and works very well. Fantastic for creating scalable designs.

Assets that you will need as a Live Streamer

Turns out, there are quite a few assets that you need to make for your channel to “Maximize” the level of customization. There are some obvious ones, such as the channel logo itself, but there are also other assets:

  • 320px wide Panels for Twitch Streamers
  • As mentioned earlier, Emotes in three different sizes. (In PNG Format Only!)
    • 28px x 28px
    • 56px x 56px
    • 112px x 112px
  • Sub-badges for consistent subscriber rewards (In PNG Format Only!)
    • 18px x 18px
    • 36px x 36px
    • 72px x 72px
  • A Profile Banner
    • Twitch recommends that you use a 1200px x 400px image, but This can be as wide as you want it to be, as long as it is under 10 megabytes in size.
    • I recommend creating a banner that is 1920px x 640px, to display with good quality to those with monitors with higher resolutions.
  • Video Player Banner (Create a Clip Montage video using Davinci Resolve!)
  • And a Channel Trailer featuring the content that you do.

Again, all of them can be designed by you personally, especially when utilizing public domain assets that can get the job done very quickly.

Settled on Hiring an artist? Look to your community first

If you have an established community, or some friends who like to do art, I recommend you first turn to them. Hiring a friend to do your art has a few advantages over a stranger –

  • You know them and may be familiar with the art that they create.
  • They may be familiar with your channel, and as such have a good idea of what kind of assets would look good there.
  • They may offer to do your art for free.
    • You should still pay them! It is a time investment for them, and they’ll appreciate that you value their effort.
  • You add to their professional portfolio, allowing them to attract future customers

Turning to your community first may also present interesting situations, such as another member of your community asking them for some art too. If you aren’t able to find anybody in your community or some artistically inclined friends, then I recommend asking any streamer you know in their discord about who did their assets. This can be an interesting talking subject for you, which could even spin up some friendship opportunities.

And that’s all I have for you on this subject for now. I’ll be revisiting this article at a later date to revamp it, as I’m not super satisfied with how it turned out, so keep in touch guys! See you in the next one!

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