As we all know, Twitch is a globally popular streaming platform with around 140 million active users.
It is a place where people live-stream various things, and thereby, express themselves.
Thanks to live content, streamers make a connection with their subscribers and other users.
In order to deepen that connection with the audience, each streamer uses available or creates emoticons with his/her own emote prefix.
In this text, we will analyze how important emoticons are for your account and give you a few ideas about creating them by yourself.
Table of Contents
What Is the Purpose of Twitch Emotes?
Twitch emotes have been introduced in 2015.
Since then, emotes have become one of the most important parts of the Twitch community.
The more emotes and Twitch emote ideas one has the better his bond with the community will be.
The bond will strengthen thanks to the best Twitch emotes that will personify his style, ideas, personality, or even different emotions.
Moreover, due to the fact that all your viewers can use and share your own emotes, think of them as sort of ads because the whole community may see them at some point.
Therefore, you might get new followers and viewers.
For now, only Twitch Partners and Twitch Affiliates can use and share custom Twitch emotes with their subscribers.
On the other hand, users who are not a part of the Twitch partnership program can only use free emotes.
When they become a part of the Twitch partnership program, they will be able to use custom animated emotes, as well.
Finally, besides the fact that Twitch emotes give you more control, they can also be a great reward for your loyal subscribers.
Custom Emote Ideas and Tips
Before we start explaining how to turn your ideas into reality, we would like to tell you a few words about custom emotes.
First of all, do not create mediocre emotes.
If you are going to create something that the whole community will use for some time, dedicate yourself to it.
Therefore, spend some time reading and listening about the whole process and aims of emotes.
And secondly, be aware that there are millions of other streamers who also create their own emotes.
So, be original and clear.
It is important to convey a message to your audience, and with a vague emoticon, it can be arduous.
How to Generate Emote Ideas
Throughout the following three steps we will show you how to design custom Twitch emotes.
1. Know your community
First of all, before you upload your first emoticon, you have to know and explore the nature of your community.
So, bear in mind the following aspects of your Twitch channel:
For example, if you create gaming content feel free to create emotes and subscriber badges related to that content.
Moreover, you can make a poll where you will explain and represent your ideas, and your subscribers will vote for the ideas they like the most.
The poll can motivate your audience to suggest various other ideas, as well, such as custom animated emotes.
Therefore, if you communicate with the people who follow you and let your audience decide which emotes are the best to create, it will look cool and you will strengthen your relationship with them.
Then think about the most popular emotes from your little survey, and pick the ones that might serve as the ways to express yourself, as well.
Bear in mind that every emote you upload is a simple image of your own style.
Finally, when you come up with all the ideas for animated emotes, or subscriber emotes, filter them one more time.
You have to ensure that they represent ideas and topics that can be illustrated via small graphic elements.
When you finish with actions from the first step you are closer to the final stage-upload.
2. Think about situations where you will use the devised emotes
So, thanks to the first step you have thought about the nature of your audience and you know what they expect.
Now is the time to get some inspiration and think about real-life situations when you and your viewers can use the emotes you have devised.
If you have been using Twitch for some time, then you might know what the most common circumstances and situations are in your chat.
Probably the most common situations in chat are the following:
When you want to express your happiness
For these moments you need emotes that will denote fun, love, hype, or simply happiness.
When there is something funny going around
Probably a situation that happens most often in a Twitch chat.
Therefore, always fill one or two Twitch emote slots with emotes like LOL or facepalm.
When you need to greet someone
It is good to greet a guy who has just taped on that subscribe button or simply a new follower.
So, by all means, you can assign a few emote slots for greeting emotes.
Situations that often happen while you are playing video games:
To sum up, this paragraph, bear in mind that the more you play and stream the more Twitch emote slots will become available.
The ideas we have presented here are good answers to common situations in which you might find yourself.
Moreover, the emotes we have recommended you to make are good to convey your feelings and share them with subs.
3. Start creating your emotes
When you have thought through everything about emotes it is time to customize them.
We recommend you start by drawing them on a piece of paper at the beginning.
That is how you can see if they seem to be appropriate and appealing for an average subscriber of your channel.
Even if the drawings look terrible, do not worry, they are only rough sketches, not a kind of official ad or expression.
The first thing you need to be aware of is that it needs to look crystal clear and understandable.
A subscriber who wants to use your Twitch emote needs to know what that expression (emote) represents straightaway.
Moreover, it would be good if they could recognize who has made it without looking at the emote prefix.
Secondly, as we said above in one of the opening paragraphs, be unique.
By becoming unique you will become exclusive, and therefore, leave others in the shade.
Unique emotes are used more often.
When an emote is used more often, more people will see it, and therefore, you will gain more followers and views.
Last but not least, we would say that clear and unique emotes are engaging at the same time.
Therefore, an engaging Twitch emote is a guarantee that you will have a steady growth in viewers all the time.
However, if you are not an artist or you do not know how to use platforms like Own3d, Fiverr, and PlaceIt, you should look for an alternative.
Hence, we recommend you find someone who knows how to create and upload an emote, with the right file size, on Twitch.
If you see that some emote design is not appropriate or well-received after a few weeks, you can delete it and get more emote slots.
There are situations when a user changes his/her username, and therefore he/she wants to change a Twitch emote prefix.
Twitch has made that prefix change possible, as well.
On Twitch official site, you can check how to change your emote prefix.
Search no more for a solution, just log in and read the instructions.
Where to Customize and Create Twitch Emotes?
Thanks to our experience and various sources we can recommend a few trustful platforms.
Therefore, search no more, you are just one click away from them.
Like we have pinpointed above, there are sites like Own3d, Fiverr, and PlaceIt, where you can create a particular Twitch, emote or the whole set of emotes.
On Fiverr, for example, you can ask a freelancer to draw a Twitch emote you want to upload.
So, thanks to Fiverr many young artists get opportunities to express their talent and earn some money.
That is great if you ask us!
However, we recommend you use Own3d because it has the best explanations and possibilities.
Moreover, you can get some ideas by simply seeing frequently used patterns.
If you are interested to check some deeper background about these sites or step-by-step explanations about an upload process, we recommend you check our article about custom Twitch emotes.
Conclusion
If you earn a lot as a Twitch Partner or Affiliate that is because of your subs.
Therefore, you should treat each subscriber with due respect.
One of the ways for saying “Thank you” on Twitch is via the aforementioned subscriber emotes.
So, keep creating good content in the first place, and create a few great emotes so that your subscribers feel appreciated.
