[00:00] Hi, welcome back to Mari Monday where I answer questions that you ask me on my marshmallow and I try to give as much advice as I possibly can in a very, well, not so short time span. I try to keep these videos under 30 minutes.
[00:13] So why don't we get started with our very first marshmallow. How would you suggest I figure out a unique design for my model? I don't want to give specifics, but I feel like most of my ideas have already been taken. Oh man, this one is a tough one to answer because, like,
[00:28] I've been doing VTubing for about four years now and I've been kind of reworking my concept like numerous times like I've gone through redesign after redesign after redesign but one thing that has been very consistent with me is my lore and my background and like the things that I chose to
[00:44] kind of represent myself like I have always just been a symbol of dreams and that has been consistent whether it's I'm changing my hair color my eye color maybe my clothing that has still been the
[00:57] same motif. So my suggestion to you while you're trying to figure out your design is what kind of like motif or a theme or aesthetics do you want within your design? I think that is a little bit
[01:10] easier to start with versus like oh should I have like twin tails? Should I have like cat ears? Should I do like the little derpy floppy you know the shy little ear thing? Like those are the kind of stuff I feel like is something you decide after once you figure out what you want your model to
[01:28] represent like what kind of character is it going to represent so figure out if you want to be like a kumire you want to be a mommy you want to be like a little sister little brother like things like that figure that stuff out first then you can kind of go alongside with it and honestly hire
[01:43] a artist to help you with the design there's so many like amazing character designers and illustrators out there. My friend Iris is a lovely example who's helped me come up with some new designs for my model. So get some concept artists to help you. All right, let's go to our next
[01:58] question. Hi Mari, I recently started streaming and the main problem so far is that I always run out of energy too quickly. I usually plan the stream for at least three hours, but I keep falling into the same pattern. I'm extremely talkative during the first 20 to 30 minutes,
[02:11] at least by my standards, and I lose 90% of my energy. Then I get bored and suddenly end stream before the two hour mark. I'm pretty new to streaming and will most likely adapt sooner or later, but I would appreciate a head start. Thank you.
[02:25] That's very interesting because I feel like when I first started streaming, maybe I had this problem too. It's been a long time since I could remember the difficulties that I had. One thing I do remember is that I always ran out of things to talk about. Like I could,
[02:40] I don't know, maybe I would have something for like the first 30 minutes and then afterwards I would just feel like, okay, what do I do next? And this is something that you get better at the more you practice and the more you keep doing it. Now, I'm not saying like, oh, you just got to keep singing and eventually get better.
[02:54] Like, yes, that will help you. But if I had to give like an advice to help give you a head start is write down things to talk about before you start singing. And I don't mean necessarily right before because if you're trying to crunch creativity within a few minutes, you're not going to really get a whole lot.
[03:09] But throughout the week, like every day, if something interesting happens, write that down. So that way when you're on stream, if you want other things to talk about, you can quickly reference your notes and take like a glance and be like, oh yeah, that's right, this whole crazy thing happened to me the other day.
[03:23] And you can start talking about that. That is one thing that I could think of that might help you. But in terms of like your energy levels, that is like, that is just something I think you shouldn't be beating yourself up over.
[03:35] you kind of have to figure out if you want to be a high energy streamer or a low energy streamer or someone who's kind of like in between because unless you're trying to be the next kai to map or like chibi doki you don't need to be talking like really really fast and doing all this like
[03:52] crazy stuff the entire stream that's not like everyone's concept style so just make sure that the things that you are doing on stream are interesting enough to you because if you're getting bored, whether that's, like, the game that you're playing, choose a different game
[04:06] that is much more exciting, or if you're talking about stuff and you're getting bored from talking, well, I mean, you gotta find some stuff that genuinely interests you, so sharing things about your hobbies will help, or again, like I said, write things down that happen
[04:20] to you throughout the day, just things like that that will help keep your own interest, because streaming shouldn't be boring to you. If it is boring to you, I mean, streaming might not be for you. Maybe you might like just making videos or something to kind of think about
[04:35] in the future. I feel like when you're coming up with your themes, make sure it's stuff that you're genuinely excited about. That's the start. All right, next question. Hi Mari, this is Volk. I wanted to ask your thoughts on charity scenes and how to go about sharing them. Is there a complicated
[04:49] process in starting them up? Do you notify the charity in question when you start the process? I was curious about the behind the scenes take on the process. I was thinking about doing charity want to share a team well first of all thank you folks for submitting this to my marshmallow
[05:02] greatly appreciated now charity streams are kind of um they are a lot of work depending on how far you want to go so i know in my own personal experiences i've had charities personally reach
[05:14] out to me to see if i'd be interested in wanting to work with them but you can reach out to the charity yourself and say hey i am so and so i really want to help raise money for like this charity I really believe in like the cause if it's something like cancer you could say hey like I've
[05:29] had a lot of family who's had issues with like cancer I'd like to help raise money for it and that would be the best way to kind of go and reach out to them because some of them they have their own campaign and like their own way of doing things like how they do for streamers it a little bit different for youtubers but for streaming some of them might use a Shopify campaign link some of them might have their own campaign they might have like a website
[05:51] and they might have their own custom overlays and outfits. You might have to make those yourself. It really depends on the charity, like, how big the charity is, how popular it is with streamers.
[06:03] And, like, if the charity is even interested in collecting donations like that, I know it's really weird that some charities are not, like, down to that kind of stuff. It's interesting, but it really just depends on the charity.
[06:15] So it never hurts to reach out and ask that specific charity what their process is. Because they will give you a much better indication than what I can. I know in terms of the behind-the-scenes stuff, once you get accepted into doing stuff at a charity,
[06:29] the next step is to either, one, see if they have their own campaign link. If not, if you have to create it. A lot of them are really nice and they can like show you how to create those campaign links, especially if they've worked as streamers in the past. Then you can gather some assets from them, or if you're very creative, you can make your own
[06:44] and make sure it gets approved by them, like you can show it to them. And then when you start streaming all of your games, I, depending on what kind of charity it is, you have a lot of like creative freedom to do whatever you want.
[06:58] Some people like to do drawings, some people do like gaming challenges, some people come up with like incentives for these charities. There's like a lot of creativity that goes behind it, but it does depend on what your limits are and your creative abilities.
[07:11] So, again, it doesn't hurt to just reach out and ask them and they can kind of guide you through the process of that. I hope that can help. Alright, let's get to our next question! Hi! Thank you for so much wealthy advice you give to us current upcoming YouTubers.
[07:24] So, I want to stream a game that I enjoy playing, but streaming wise this said game doesn't perform well and only really does well as YouTube videos, which is pretty off-line in this game night game and just stream a different game that does well. But I just stream the game I enjoy the most.
[07:37] And the next question I have is, do you consider a PNGTuber a VTuber? As I'll be starting out a PNGTuber before I can afford a 2D model. Thank you. So I actually want to answer these questions in reverse,
[07:49] because I feel like the second question is a lot easier to answer than the first question. The answer to the second question is, I do consider PNGTubing as part of VTubing. vtubing it's part of like that whole umbrella of faceless content creation and I feel like when it
[08:04] comes to like streaming when people stream with like a png youtuber you can get kind of creative with it by having multiple different images and like toggling different talking and expression so even though you don't have a live 2d model you can still emulate a lot of like animation
[08:20] and like more expressiveness just with some static images it takes like a little bit to set up but Once you get it set up, it's just keyframing everything. Oh, not keyframing. I'm hotkeying everything, and then you should be good to go, and it makes them much more expressive.
[08:34] If you just have, like, the PNG just sitting there, chilling, or if you're just using, like, Discord Reactive, which you can still put images on Discord Reactive and swap between those, too. That is possible. I feel like a lot of people in, like, livestreaming, that might not always be the most enjoyable thing to look at
[08:50] because there's not a lot of movements, and people who like to watch livestreams typically like to watch a lot of things moving and going around. The reason why stuff like that does really well in like YouTube videos is because you can edit.
[09:02] You know what I mean? Like you can add effects on screen after, you can do all those other like squishing and zooming and all those other crazy stuff on the screen. But in terms of your first question, with games, unfortunately,
[09:15] depending on the audience that you've built up, they have what they like. If they're not really interested in like a game, you can't force them to watch that on stream so ask them ask them what kind of games they would like to see you play
[09:28] ask your community on my discord make some posts on there and see what they want and then try to play those games and see if they will come watch those in terms of like YouTube videos the reason why it does better is because people on YouTube
[09:40] are actively searching for that game so you are attracting people who like that game so you have a couple different options option one is to like make more content of that game on YouTube and then tell those people on YouTube that you stream
[09:52] so that people who like that game will come watch you play that. Or two, you could just make it kind of like a separate thing entirely where you just make videos on that, but then you'll stream like other games. It really also depends how similar those games are
[10:07] because if you're playing like Minecraft one day and then CSGO the next day, I mean, usually people like a similar style type of game. So if it's like that vastly different,
[10:19] then I could see why people would want to skip out. But in terms of, like, storytelling games, those ones, people also typically like roughly the same genre. So, very vague for me to give a solid answer for this since I don't know what games these are.
[10:32] But hopefully, I can give you somewhere of a start for this. And I thought to your next question. Good day, Mari. I was wondering, do you think switching to streaming on YouTube rather than Twitch is a good idea? Or is multicast the way to go?
[10:45] Especially since you mentioned in a recent Mari Monday that YouTube likes keeping people on the platform and I already have a second channel where I post my covers. Um, I feel like for this question, I'm a little confused on one thing,
[10:57] because you're saying that you have a second channel where you post your covers, so what are you posting on your first channel? Like, are you posting gaming content, chatting content, are you streaming on the first channel, or are you only streaming on Twitch?
[11:13] Because, in my opinion, this is kind of how Twitch works. Twitch doesn't really give you any discoverability unless if you randomly win the lottery and get someone who wants to randomly like read into you or if you have friends who want to read into you That the only way you can get discovered on that platform So what you have to do is you got to post on social media you got to post on YouTube and constantly and I mean constantly tell people hey come check out my live stream
[11:38] Hey, I'm going to be streaming. Hey, hey, hey, live stream, Mike, check me out, check me out. You have to constantly bring people from other platforms to your Twitch stream. And if you have two channels and one of it is just song covers, I mean, if you're like
[11:51] a VTuber, you have the luxury of just using your channel to post your song covers and then like your highlights and whatever stuff that you're interested in. Like VTubers have like a little bit of a leeway to post more variety on their channels compared to other YouTubers. That doesn't
[12:06] mean you should be posting whatever the hell you want. You should still have like an actual strategy with your YouTube content, but you have a bit more leeway due to the idol culture aspect of
[12:18] VTubing. Like, that is a privilege that VTubers get compared to other content creators. So, I feel like, personally, I multi-stream because I have discovered that having a VOD
[12:30] channel is kind of useless now. The fact that we can actually live stream on YouTube. We don't need to have a dedicated VOD channel anymore because your VOD's right there on the live stream. Like, if they want to watch the VOD,
[12:42] you can just link it in the video and they can just or go to your live tab and just watch the bod there so that's really like why I like multi-streaming is because I can be on Twitch so people who like the Twitch culture can enjoy it and then people who just want to work and watch
[12:57] me on YouTube have that option too and the bod's right there and I can timestamp it and I don't have to worry about downloading and re-uploading and all this other crazy stuff so that's like my theory behind multi-streaming there's nothing wrong with like streaming on different platforms
[13:10] especially if you're just starting off and you're trying to figure out where is your audience are Are they mostly on Twitch? Are they mostly on YouTube? Those are things to consider. And also, I feel like the more important thing to think about is when you're planning your live streams,
[13:22] how are you planning on making it into a YouTube video after? If someone's going to sit there and watch your live stream, is it entertaining to watch after the live stream is over? Or is your live stream one of those types of live streams where you really just have to be there
[13:37] and then afterwards re-watching it and it's not... it's just better when it's, like, live and happening. Because if it's just better when it's live and happening, then you might need to start tweaking your streaming ideas a bit more
[13:52] because what you want to aim for is replayability. You want your thoughts to be rewatchable and be like, oh, that's right, I want to remember, like, these moments. I'm going to go back and, like, watch this.
[14:04] Or if someone is new to your channel, you want to sit there and, like, watch it. So those are things I personally think are more important rather than like coming up with multiple channels. I feel like I get a lot of questions who constantly ask me about this multiple channel thing
[14:19] and I'm wondering if it's because I have multiple channels. Like, if you're interested in learning about my multiple channel theory and why I do that, let me know in the comments down below and maybe I'll make this a dedicated video on that topic alone
[14:32] because I really just, I don't want you all to overthink the whole multiple channel thing. There is a reason why I'm doing it, and I am an exception, not the rule.
[14:44] So, let me know if that's something you're interested in learning more about. Alright, let's go to our next question. Hi Mari, I was wondering about your thoughts on a trend slash habit that I've been seeing around where YouTubers and streamers post after-shame tweets thanking raiders and mentioning who they raid into.
[14:58] Ah, yeah, that's right. I forgot people still do this. yeah people have been doing this since I first started vtubing and then I used to also do this I used to like you know go live and then at the end I would thank everybody and say who I rated
[15:12] into next and it's like it's like a really nice gesture to like thank someone and tell like the people who are following you oh who am I checking out but over the years I have kind of realized like even myself when I'm scrolling through things I don't really care about that kind of stuff like
[15:29] typically if I like a creator I like to watch just that creator maybe I might check out the streamer that my oshi is you know talking about mainly but I have to like really be in that mood because
[15:41] here's the problem normally when I do go check out these other creators they're not making any content that is remotely something that I am interested in like if my oshi plays a lot of horror games and then she raves into someone who just plays like dark souls I'm not into dark
[15:56] personally so I'm not gonna sit there and watch this person play dark souls like I'm not interested in it so I'm not saying like oh you should never do it or whatever it is a really nice gesture and who knows maybe your community might
[16:08] actually like the person that you had rated into or the people who you're thinking who had rated into you but like you know if that person's content is not really something that their community is interested in it's not gonna help them
[16:20] and benefit them in the long run it doesn't hurt you know but like I don't do it anymore because I just um don't really get a lot of good feedback from them a good engagement from
[16:33] my audience and it makes kind of sense because my audience is other aspiring like youtubers so I get why like I can't really do that but maybe you can maybe your community will actually go support them and stuff like I don't know it depends on your community and I do feel like
[16:48] keep careful when you're constantly mentioning who you're rating into and thanking people because if you have like a bunch of people's names crammed into like a tweet it gets kind of spammy and it's kind of like it can be a little like annoying so there's
[17:04] there's ways to do it I feel like and it really just depends on how you want to shout people out like I don know I mean I get something different about it I don feel like I have the best answer for this since I indifferent And again it doesn work for me And I never got good feedback when I tried doing it But I do see other people do it and they do get good
[17:23] feedback. So don't look at me as the example for it. It never really worked for me. All right, so let's go to our last question of the day. Hi, Mari. I'm an artist and a gamer. I have yet to
[17:36] properly start on social media and I want to do your advice. Creating the data back from making art content is hard. I've been doing it for a long time but it's still just not enough whereas gaming content is easy to make. But I get afraid it can be discouraging for viewers to watch if
[17:52] the streamer gameplay is laggy especially with games like Genshin or Honkai Star Rail and both are very hard to entertain through. Yet I want to do both. What do you recommend? Should I make a
[18:05] channel only for Beanie or should I make an art YouTube channel? Both are completely different niches and I want to do both but I feel like I gotta sacrifice one to build an audience. What is your opinion on this? And if you do say art channel, how do you grow an art channel on
[18:18] any social media considering art takes a lot of time to make? Thank you, have a nice day. This is like a very loaded question because you're asking me multiple different things here. So like I'll try to give my best opinion on all of this but this is, you're asking for a lot right now
[18:35] And like, I only got so much brain cells to really process this. So the first step of this is deciding between if you want to do art or gaming. So if you're going to be doing gaming, obviously picking the niche of the games you're going to be doing is important,
[18:51] which it looks like you want to do things like Genshin Honkai Star Rail. You very well could make a whole channel dedicated to Genshin videos, Honkai Star Rail, like making lore, how-to tips, like interesting glitches, like polls, gacha polls, and all this
[19:08] other like stuff. Like there's so many different ways you can make videos on that topic. And the same goes for art. For art, you could do like speed painting, story time, you could do how to do art, you could do like fan art stuff, or you could do art challenges, you could do commentary on art,
[19:24] like there's a lot of things you could do on that topic too. I don't recommend doing both on the same channel, these are two very, like, drastically different things that belong on two separate channels. This is specifically YouTube. On Twitch, if you are streamed on Twitch, you can do, like,
[19:41] gameplay and then do art days. Like, you could have, like, a dedicated, like, on Tuesdays, we draw art, and then, or, like, maybe you could do two days. Like, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, those are our art days, and then, like, Saturday and Friday is our gaming days. Like, you could do that for streaming
[19:56] wise but in terms of like youtube content you want to separate those because the chances of people who want to watch your genchin content they do not care about the art stuff so you can kind of like mess around and experiment to see what works on your live streaming stuff because people are more
[20:10] forgiving for live streams but youtube it's pretty cut and dry like these are completely different issues also really depends on what is it you're doing if you wanted to combine these somehow then the only way I could personally think of it is making art for Genshin characters
[20:26] so you could do some Genshin like style videos but then you can make art videos that are about the Genshin characters it just depends on how you package everything it depends on what your strategy is like do you want to do let's play content or commentary are you making memes like
[20:43] reactionary funny highlighted memes or are you doing slow commentary stuff about your feelings and stuff that's happened to you and you just have like some b-roll that's more important in terms of
[20:56] like growing yourself because like in terms of like growing an art channel on social media that is like a completely different conversation because now you gotta ask yourself are you taking art commissions like what kind of audience do you want it seems to me and i'm like you don't understand
[21:10] who your audience is and i think the first step of this is figuring out who you want to make your content for? What is it that you are very passionate about? And I, when I say passionate,
[21:22] I mean, can you make a hundred videos on art? About 500. How about a thousand? Or can you do that with Genshin? Can you make a hundred videos on Genshin? 500? A thousand? How many videos can
[21:34] you actually make on these topics? And after you figure those two things out, okay, then you can trying to decide okay what should I pursue because you could very well just do art as like a hobby
[21:47] and occasionally post your art stuff while you still make all of your Genshin content or if you want to focus on having an art career then that can be a conversation during the day and you could just play Genshin just for fun just to decompress like your live streams it's going to focus on art
[22:02] but some days you might just play game and you're not going to try to make any content out of it It's just a day for you to hang out with your community and chill. There's ways to do both without having to make content around both. Just one of them is going to have to be a hobby.
[22:15] And that is the ultimate thing you're going to have to decide on. So I hope that could give you a bit more insight on it. Because that is like a lot to unpack. And yeah, hopefully it can clear up some confusion for you. And that's all I have for today with that being said.
[22:29] Thank you so much for watching. If you would like to submit a question for me to answer for my next Mario Monday, I'll have the link down for me in the description below. Thank you all so much for watching everybody and remember everything reminds you of something. Bye!