10 Reasons Your Twitch Overlay Sucks | StreamSchool

okay here's the deal I see a lot of ugly overlays on Twitch so many ugly overlays and as someone who has spent the majority I want to say maturity we're gonna say majority of my life working in computer graphics design and motion media that makes me sad so let's fix it together these are 10 reasons your twitch overlay sucks my name is Chris folia I'll be your professor welcome to stream school before we get started here's the obligatory make sure you hit the like and subscribe button below the video if you enjoy the video enjoy my content in general or just enjoy looking at my pretty face and just a reminder that I am live every Tuesday Friday and Saturday at twitch.tv slash Oracle fish live if you want to see a prime example of what a good overlay looks like now to the list 1 the obvious one your overlay sucks if you don't have an overlay ahh you think this one was a common sense you'd think I wouldn't have to talk about it but I see way way too many streamers that just have a camera over gameplay and nothing else no additional graphics node notifications alerts nothing y'all are hurting me now I understand those of you that just want to stream from your console for a few friends as a hobby you want to be a hobby streamer and that is totally fine but if you want to be taken seriously as a streamer you need on overlay overlays give your extremist sense of professionalism they give your viewers an idea of what your personality is and they even give your viewers incentive to follow subscribe cheer and potentially even donate so you made on overlay period moving on to you just have too much going on you know what I'm talking about text everywhere for followers subscribers tears donations all of your social media listed for Facebook Twitter tik-tok myspace Zynga whatever maybe even a little donation goal bar at the bottom it's too much get rid of it ditch all of it throw all of it out I personally like to adhere to the kiss method keep it simple do but the problem with having too many elements on screen is that each additional element subtracts importance from every other element on screen so as a general rule of thumb I'd recommend having to maybe a maximum of three things on screen at once choose the things that are absolutely most important to you me personally I just showed my most recent subscribers and my most recent cheers however your priorities might be different three your overlay is sloppy first of all let's say that your camera doesn't perfectly match your border or you have you have a few text elements that are out of line and I'm not even talking significantly just even a few pixels screams to your viewers that you just don't care so I want you to take the time and be an absolute pixel fucker that's an industry term I pull out to say that I think I think I'm allowed to say that I don't know in addition to that I've also seen people doing things like upgrading to a green screen but still having the full camera border around it and nonsense like that you need to think about the motivations behind your design and what it is saying to your viewers and it better not be saying I'm lazy secondly your overlay might be covering important gameplay elements you can't just go slapping an overlay on your stream and hoping for the best you need to pay attention to what your overlay is doing relative to everything else on screen for and I know these next few go hand-in-hand but I felt like they were each important enough to sort of warrant their own bullet point but for your overlay is too big look I get it I understand you want people to see your beautiful face but ideally you want your camera to just be big enough for people to see your facial expressions and reactions to the gameplay but not so big that it's covering important gameplay elements your viewers still want to see the game and unless it's a just chatting stream then I guess you are the game to get the sizing right I'd recommend going to a professional stream someone that has a couple hundred or thousand viewers screenshotting it and then sizing your overlay to match theirs in OBS because it's a size that is already proven to be good it works five your overlay is static it can't be moved if you're streaming the same game for the rest of eternity and that's the only game you're ever gonna play and your overlay works for that game this is totally fine no worries you can skip to the next point however if you ever want to spice it up with some gaming variety you need an overlay that can easily be moved around surprise different games have different UI elements in different locations and you don't want your overlay to be covering up vital information to your viewers your viewers just aren't gonna get the same sense of danger as you if they can't see your health bar and they're not gonna even know what's going on in the game if they can't see that in port an inventory your dialog box sidenote ditch the top and bottom pieces of your overlay because most cams put their UI elements at the top and bottom of the screen so get rid of those disgusting gaudy HUD looking top and bottom pieces and do yourself a gigantic favor and if not for you do it for me 6 your stream alerts are in the way I see a lot of streams that have their notifications and alerts just smack dab in the center of the screen oh my god yoga platypus just followed Wow you might be thinking yes I get 1 or 2 follows per stream so having have making a big deal out of the follower notification and putting his smack dab in the center is a brilliant idea you should take a page out of the Boy Scout manual and be prepared several months ago back when I was on YouTube I was raided by none other than Nick a 30 by complete surprise and let me tell you those notifications just kept coming and you guessed it smack dab center of the screen nobody could tell what was going on in the game and it was very annoying so I'd recommend taking your notifications and moving them to either the upper left or upper right corner of your screen whichever one works so you just put them out of the way but still very visible 7 your overlay is a preset package or you haven't even changed the defaults before I get crucified yes you can go to one of those cool websites and you can buy an entire overlay some of them are even customizable and if that's the route you want to go that is totally fine there is nothing wrong with that it looks professional cool but if you want to take your overlay to the next level you need something that is customized to you you want your overlay to scream from the mountaintops this is my stream and nobody else's so if you are not an artist I would recommend supporting an artist and hopping over to Fiverr or something and paying someone to make a beautiful customized overlay just for you and get them to replace that mspaint looking logo while you're at it and again i 100% understand that if you're just starting out or something this might not be the biggest priority for you but having an identical or similar overlay the hundreds or thousands of other streamers just sort of whispers hate your overlay is inconsistent and I realized this one is similar to the sloppy point but I just really wanted to nail the concept into the coffin of your mind that sentence work basically you just want to make sure that you're using consistent fonts and colors and design elements between all of your scenes and different overlaid pieces you just don't want to be the person that has a neon gameplay scene and maybe a fifties advert style facecam scene and maybe like a mechatronic starting soon screen make sure everything on your stream feels like it belongs together you want to give your viewers a consistent idea of who you are and there's none of your design elements match up or anything they're gonna be really confused and as a side note if you're looking for a really cool color scheme you can always hop by color adobe.com and you can drag a color around a color wheel and it'll tell you what colors work well with that color so you don't have to spend thousands of dollars at art school to figure that out 9 your overlay sucks if you don't have enough scenes at an absolute bare minimum I would recommend having one a starting soon screen this gives your viewers a chance to show up before anything cool happens I'd recommend playing this one a few minutes before your stream starts just to give people a chance to get their to a full camera screen for when you have an awesome story to tell her you're just chatting with your viewer you don't want to be like a tiny thumbnail on your screen next to a really boring game menu while you have an awesome story to tell and it's an absolute bonus to have your chat up on this screen as well so everybody can sort of tell what's going on three a game play is seen this one's pretty self-explanatory and for a be right back screen this one lets your viewers know that you haven't just completely ditched them but more importantly it lets new viewers just showing up to your stream know that you didn't just accidentally hit the stream Now button and go to the supermarket or something down the street lets them know that if they stick around they'll be in for some awesome content in just a minute and ten for my final point your overlay sucks if you're just not doing enough basically if your stream looks as good or as professional as the few absurdly successful streamers out there then you are doing the absolute bare minimum that thousands of other streamers are already doing making your stream look professional is really just the first step you need to think of creative ways that you can use your overlay to really demonstrate your shining personality and if you don't have a personality then I guess you better be really flippin good at the game because people are certainly not watching me for my gameplay and that's the list if you found this video in any way shape form or fashion even remotely helpful make sure you hit that like button to let me know and make sure you smack that subscribe button to stay tuned for all sorts of future tips and tricks coming at you and just a friendly reminder that I am live every Tuesday Friday and Saturday at twitch.tv slash Oracle fish live you are completely optional homework for the week is to take a good hard can you enliven tways that you could potentially improve your overall a until next time my name is Chris folia process hours [Music] you

Channel: Stream Scholar

Views: 20,548

Keywords: oracles stream school, chris folea, overlay, twitch overlay, stream overlay, overlays, obs, twitch, how to stream, how to stream on twitch, stream advice, live stream, twitch tips and tricks, how to grow on twitch, streamlabs, streamelements, facecam overlay, streamlabs obs, streaming, obs studio, live, twich, fortnite overlay, twitch alerts, xsplit, broadcast, stinger transition, how to, stream, obs tutorial, twitch overlays, StreamSchool, how to grow on twitch fast, Stream Scholar

Id: T37qoKmgrkE

Length: 10min 51sec (651 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 08 2020