VTuber Q&A: Design, Engagement & Rebranding — Full Transcript & Summary

[00:00] Welcome back to Mari Mundo where I answer questions that you send me on my marshmallow. Let's start off with our first question. Hi Mari, I've been streaming on and off for about 3 years and can't seem to get engagement and also can't get things going.

[00:13] I've used your videos to help and they have, but I just can't seem to get things going. Also, tips on character designs and stuff like that. I feel like my model is also a problem most likely. Thank you so much. Now, this one's kind of hard because I don't know what your model looks like,

[00:25] but some general design tips that I could possibly give are don't overcomplicate your designs. Now, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't, you know, make things, like, super simple and basic. What I mean by, like, overcomplicating is when you're combining, like, multiple different concepts together,

[00:39] like a succubus witch cat girl, that's, like, too many concepts. Like, stick to one or maybe two. It's actually really hard to pull off two specific concepts as well.

[00:51] Like, I see a lot of, like, something cat. I see a lot of people always implement cat in, like, their concept, and it just never really clicks in with people. because you gotta remember, like, people who are watching you, they have to be able to figure out

[01:04] what the heck you are by looking at you. If you're supposed to be a cat girl, you gotta look like a cat girl. If you're, like, a witchy cat, so you're, like, a cat, but you have, like, a witch hat, I think that's, like, okay. I've also seen them, like, cat succubuses work, too, but, like, sometimes

[01:18] I've been seeing a lot of people, especially with, like, the sea creature YouTubers, like, they keep adding, like, cat or dog or something else, and, like, people aren't really understanding any of that when you look at their concept. That's like a general design tip is that when you're making

[01:32] your character model, make sure that the concept is pretty clear and people can understand right away what you are. Now in terms of like can't seem to get engagement, I mean what kind of content

[01:44] are you making? Are you just, are you even uploading videos or are you just live streaming? Because getting people to engage in your live stream is really hard. Especially since a lot of people don't have that much time after like COVID's been lifted people aren't inside as much anymore so

[01:59] they're not watching a lot of live streams and people are busy so watching like a three to eight hour live stream not many people have time for that if you really think about it but I feel like live streaming should be supplementary content for you and you should be making other types of

[02:13] content such as short-form content or long-form content and then use your live streams as like either your recording sessions essentially or a way for you to really connect with your community Hopefully that gives you some kind of a base to start.

[02:25] Alright, so let's go to our next question. I've been using my IRL name in most of my projects, and now that I've discovered how much I like being a VTuber, I want to draw a line between my identity and my VTuber character, but I don't want to start from scratch either. How can I keep my audience while rebranding to a new character?

[02:40] Ooh, that's actually really hard. Especially if you have a current IRL identity I think Cookie Swirl is a pretty good example of how that can be reviewed because Cookie Swirl used to do a lot of IRL content and then swapped to being a vtuber but

[02:58] Cookie Swirl didn't become like a completely new character and identity because her name was Cookie Swirl it's a little bit easier to get into that swap between the persona but if you've been using like your IRL name which I really don't recommend using your IRL name for content creation because

[03:13] of like doxing and stalking and like just for safety reasons so you do have the option to just make an oc like be a vtaber just have that be your oc with like your name or you could say like hey this is like my oc her name is blah blah blah i'm gonna be making content as her or him whatever

[03:30] like your pronouns are i think someone who implemented this really well is gina ninja because they used to have like their own oc that represented like them and then they swapped over to like their character and they literally just made a video kind of talking about it so maybe

[03:45] it's something you could talk with your community about saying hey I know you've known me as this persona like this person but now I'm going to be doing this like character you could also do like a half and half or some days you do vtubing stuff and some days you do IRL stuff it just depends on

[03:59] your community because you can't really follow your community if they want to leave because the content that you're making now is not what they signed up for like they don't owe you their time because you decided to make some changes about yourself. So like it really just depends on

[04:14] how accepting your community is and how much work you're willing to do between making this kind of rebrand because chances are if you're doing a complete rebrand you're basically going to be starting from scratch anyways. So if you want to do like a complete rebrand don't worry about

[04:30] keeping your current audience because I mean you're basically building a new audience entirely anyways. Sorry, I'm not trying to be like a bummer for it. I just want to give you like some kind of realistic expectations because I've rebranded three times and I've lost like a lot of my

[04:43] community every single time I've done it. Some of them stayed around, but like it was a much smaller percentage. So it's like I've already kind of been through this whole thing and yeah, if you're going to rebrand, just go for it. All right, let's go to our next question. Hey Mari,

[04:56] newer viewer here. So my apologies if I bring up a question that I've even asked. What are the to introduce lore or bring up lore so would making comic strips be one way that it could be done i want to focus quite a bit on more but don't know how to bring up thank you for your time

[05:09] yeah you could totally do comic strips i've never seen a youtuber do like comic strip panels and then do reading and kind of like voiceover stuff that are lore but that would be pretty unique and you could do that there's been plenty of youtube channels who make like comic strip type of videos

[05:23] and they just kind of voice over and like that's like their content so you could totally do that i I feel like lore only really matters when people are really into your content and it like a fun little treat to give them and for yourself It not like a lore will help you grow kind of thing And I think that what a lot of people get confused about that they focus so much on their lore

[05:45] that they don't focus about making content that people want to actually watch. Because a lot of the times, you're going to get mostly casual viewers, and a lot of casual viewers don't particularly care about your lore

[05:57] because you're a content creator. You're not like an anime production studio. You're not a movie production studio. Like, they're not there with the consensus of, oh, yeah, they are making this, like, lore realm with all this character stuff.

[06:11] Maybe if you have, like, a D&D campaign and that was, like, your whole content, you had, like, a whole group of fans and you're all a bunch of D&D characters, then people would be more like, oh, yeah, I want to know the lore and the backstory, but you're just a content creator. So, don't focus too much on lore.

[06:24] only use lore as like a guideline or a rubric for how your character is going to talk and act and react to whatever it is that's happening to you that's the best way i think you could bring up

[06:36] lore all right let's move on to our next question hello sorry for asking i looked around everywhere for your links at this point i think i couldn't find it who made your models if you have some credit somewhere i failed to find on x youtube and twitch so i'm sorry to ask here other than that

[06:51] Thank you so much for your videos and streams. Wishing you good luck and lots of success in what you love. And yeah, no worries, I don't post them on Twitter anymore because the way I see social media is that people who are casual viewers of mine don't really care who my artist links are.

[07:08] I do have them in my highlighted section though, so if you go on like my ex profile and you look at like the highlights, I have all of my model credits listed there because that's where VTubers and other content creators want to commission the artists that I've worked with are going to actually care and look.

[07:23] Sponsorships and other like viewers, they don't care about any of that stuff, so there's no point in me putting that in my bio. And I also did include who made my model art on my blue sky post, and that is pinned.

[07:35] So to answer your question, the person who made this live to be model is Moeko Peach. Moeko does not work with indies anymore, so I haven't gotten any model updates from her in over like two years now.

[07:47] she only works for corporate youtubers and the person who did the rigging for this model is alice tinnid which i do have both of those credits linked under my youtube live streams

[07:59] and every time i use a different live tv model i link those credits underneath my youtube live streams i thought i still had them linked on twitch but i muscle backed them and deleted the panel for that so thanks for letting me know because that means i'm gonna have to go re-put

[08:12] those back on. I honestly don't think anyone even checked the Twitch channels. So good on you for like noticing that and letting me know. Alright, let's go to our last question. Hi Mari I been streaming for a few months now and I not sure how to improve When I make a short or long video I can improve my storytelling and everything but when I streaming I don know what to improve i keep up my chatter play mostly play mostly decently and have zero idea to go from

[08:36] here any advice on what to look for in my box to improve on would be appreciated now it's a little hard because i don't know what your channel's content is about it's a lot easier if i could actually look to see what you're doing but in a general sense it really depends on like what it

[08:51] you want to get out of live streaming because I think a lot of like streamers who want to make it big they have this expectation of like having a lot of people chatting and talking all at once and gifting giving them lots of money and if that isn't your goal then the other thing that I could

[09:09] think of is okay do you want to just figure out how to find more interesting things to talk about how to make more clippable moments because if you're saying you can keep up with your chatter and you play decently maybe what you could improve on is the chat interaction that you're doing with

[09:25] your current audience or instead of like focusing so much about being good at the game play the game as like a personality like how can you make these clips more interesting and storytelling because

[09:39] I just like I'm a little confused because some of the things you're asking on here is a little too vague for me to really give like a response to especially since like you can always improve your content even I'm always improving my content I'm trying to figure out things that will work

[09:53] better for my channel something that I recently discovered is that people don't like these chatting type of videos that I do on my main channel and they kind of like sitting here listening to me on like their fucking monitor while they go to draw or they're working on other

[10:06] stuff or they're driving so I have like kind of a podcast style channel on here and that took me four years to kind of test out different video ideas, different editing styles, and figure that out. So now with my live streams, a lot of people like to listen to me on a podcast level. So I do

[10:23] a lot of like just chatting stuff on topics that I know my audience is interested in because my audience is a bunch of aspiring YouTubers or people who are interested in the VTubing culture. So I find topics that are related to that. If you know your audience, you know how you can start

[10:39] improving your content. So I guess my advice to you in order to start improving your VODs is to get to know your audience a bit more, get to know the people who are watching you, look at your analytics, don't be afraid of your analytics, and figure out what they are interested in so that way

[10:54] you can start making content around those interests. Hopefully that can help you. And that is all the questions for today. Thank you so much for listening. If you would like to submit a question for next week's video, I will leave that link down in the description down below. Yeah, with that

[11:07] you inside. Thank you so much for watching and remember everything reminds you of something. Bye!