Create Branded Animations for Your Gaming Channel
Streaming is not slowing down
Was there ever a better time to be a streamer? As we gradually ease up the distancing measures, we can reflect back on how we lived through an unprecedented period in our lives. I’m sure you have (as have I), claimed how you’ll read more, work out, learn to cook, etc during the lockdowns, but let’s face it, most of us had our faces buried in our mobile/tablet/desktop devices most of the time. With an 80% rise in content consumption since the coronavirus pandemic, average video watching times are expected to reach a 100 minutes a day. This is not a trend or a habit that will easily go away.
Twitch viewership has increased a full 31 percent between March 8th and March 22nd, growing to 43 million hours watched from 33 million hours. But you know most of this already, that’s why you’ve started your own channel. For this reason, I will leave the extensive work needed to start your own gaming channel for a different post. Here, I want to tell you about ways to make your stream or channel videos more eye-catching, engaging, and visually professional.
It’s even tougher to get noticed now
As if it wasn’t inflated enough, the influx of new streamers has made it seemingly impossible to stand out in the gaming market. As platforms like Twitch, YouTube and Facebook constantly work on improving their search algorithms, you, as a content creator, still have tons of work to do to set yourself apart.
Obviously, search engine optimization (SEO) is key, you need a good channel name, the “perfect” thumbnail, a very long and true description, and even subtitles if possible. It’s important to be fun or educational and you should expand from the games and connect with your viewers on a personal basis
What I will concentrate on here is building your channel’s visual style and identity. Gaming has become serious business and as such, your channel is your brand, you will want to create an eye-catching visual presence and a recognizable style and brand.
Branding is key
Getting your video to show in a search result or a suggestion is hard enough but what a lot of streamers tend to ignore is a hugely important thing for SEO, how long you keep the viewer interested, and how often the viewer comes back to your channel for more content.
This is why you have to treat your entire live-stream (or edited video) as a story you're telling the viewers. When the video starts, they should be welcomed and informed quickly. Not only must your channel logo be presented in a cool way, you should share info on social links, events, and merch. A professionally designed intro can do all of that, in just a few seconds. But the logo intro is just the start, obviously.
Browse over 1000 unique logo intro templates
Whether you’re streaming live or publishing carefully edited videos, you will want to keep the entire stream/video visually consistent, start to finish. This includes "stream starting soon", "brb" and "pause" screens for a live stream, transitions and a call to action for videos uploaded to YouTube. And if you’re posting highlights of your streams on YouTube (you really should, provided you have the time), you will need everything mentioned to make the perfect highlight reel for YouTube.
A visual identity will go a long way in helping your first-time watchers remember you but will also provide a sense of professionalism. Viewers always appreciate that you take your work seriously. Top streamers, who can afford it, pay a lot of money for professional video creators and editors so their every video is perfect throughout. You may not have the same budget but video making options are becoming more and more approachable, even on a tiny budget.
Video creation online
Video editing is a tiring task. Not only does it require years of practice and expensive software, but it also requires powerful computer gear that can render videos in any kind of acceptable time-frame.
This is where companies like Videobolt see an opportunity to simplify the process, by offering professionally designed, highly customizable, video templates that can be easily edited, rendered, and claimed online, with your device providing nothing but an internet connection.
I know the term "template" sounds a bit limiting. After all, you don’t want to use the same intro as hundreds of other streamers out there. But video templates have gone a long way and customization features are getting more versatile and easier to use every day. So just because you might be using the same template, it doesn’t mean your intro can’t look completely different from all others. Also, there are over a thousand unique designs, with new ones published daily. Quite enough for everyone to show their unique style.
Professional intros, outros, CTAs, transitions, pause, brb screens
You may need to have a number of different videos at the ready for live streams. You’ll start with a stream starting soon screen (maybe a music visualizer), and continue with a logo intro. You’ll still need animated transitions, as well as pause and brb screens, and you’ll need them to all have the same visual feel, or be “on brand” as they say. For a more in-depth overview of the benefits and options for branding your stream, check out our blog dedicated to creating custom stream overlays.
All of these video templates are different in their own way, but the good part is that editing each one of them is very similar and quite simple. To explain the process, I will be creating a gaming intro for an imaginary YouTube channel.
Let's say the name of this channel is “My Gaming Channel” - because if I had an awesome YouTube gaming channel name, I’d start my own gaming channel (not really as I’m a noob but you get it). Let’s also say my favorite game is Fortnite (for obvious reasons) and therefore my channel colors can be different, but it makes sense for the style to be cartoonish and you can easily find different Fortnite color palettes online if you want to adapt you channel colors to something specific from the game.
Making a gaming intro with Videobolt
The first step, naturally, is choosing the template that best suits you (don’t fret if your first choice isn’t perfect, you can test any video template, even before subscribing). After landing on videobolt.net I hit the “newest templates” button to go to advanced search. Here you can browse by category, style, orientation, resolution, color, or simply type in what you need and see what comes out.
Even before I use any of the advanced search filters, the Mini Blob template catches my eye. It’s simple, cartoony, and has a few colors I can adapt to reflect my channel and the game I play. I hit the Edit button to start the video editor. If you play the video inside the editor, a few buttons (placeholders) will appear, highlighting the replaceable media in the video.
Intros are very simple (by video template standards), the only 2 replaceable media placeholders are one for your logo and one for your message. I hit the logo placeholder button (or you can click the placeholder name in the list in the sidebar), which gives me the option to upload my logo or use previously used items from my personal media library.
The media library will come in handy for future projects as any media used is automatically stored in your media library for future re-use. The media library also contains royalty-free stock footage which can come in very handy for slideshows or pause screen backgrounds. I use the “your logo here” logo from my previously used files, since I didn't have a logo designed for my imaginary channel.
Replacing the text is very similar, easier in fact, as you only need to fill in the text. You can also decide you don’t want the text there, in that case just click on the eye symbol and the entire placeholder will be removed from the video. Any change you make will be immediately applied and a quick still image preview of your final video will be displayed.
As we move on from replaceable media, the next tab is ‘Themes’. This tab will show you a number of author-created color variations and to hasten your video editing enormously. I see the purple theme is about the right color combo I want, so I apply it. While I like most of the colors, the white background is a bit too simple for my taste.
In order to adjust the background color, I go to the next tab “Customization”. Here you will be able to change all, or most of the colors which appear in the video. This includes the background, text color, logo color, effects colors, etc.
As I like most of the colors, except for the white background, I expand the Color Scheme list and look for the white color. I move the color slider towards blue and look for the perfect fit using image previews. You can also use hex codes if you already know the perfect color to use.
Once I’ve found the perfect fit, all that is left is to produce the free preview. This action will render a 540p preview video with all your edits implemented, as well as a Videobolt watermark. After a few minutes, your preview video will be finished rendering on our servers after which you can either remove the watermark by using a subscription token, or go back to editing. You can access any previous version of your video from the ‘History’ tab and continue editing from there.
Editing templates on Videobolt will be nearly identical regardless of the type of video, whether it’s an outro with a call to action, a transition screen, or a visualizer for your stream starting soon screen, the process is the same. You upload your media, change the text, and customize the colors. That’s pretty much it, our world-class community of designers already took care of the rest.
Got you interested?
The best part is you can try it now and for free! That includes every video template in the Videobolt library, every customization option, and 3 million + stock footage images. So start playing around today, and by tomorrow, you might have all your video creation necessities covered with just one subscription.