We're making it happen: First Livestream next week!
TL;DR: I'm going to finally start doing some live streams! The first stream will be 4pm EST/1pm PST, Oct 4, at twitch.tv/glassdragonstudios. I'll be getting my feet wet with Rust and SpacetimeDB by making something like a MUD!
I've always loved doing all kinds of vocal performances. Since I was a teenager and first decided that I wanted to be a voice actor and that it was never going to be able to happen, I've jumped on every small opportunity that I've had to do similar things. Voice-over work for friends and even one of my jobs. Recording a parody song I wrote. Doing random little voice-acting snippets on request or whims on social media back when things like AudioBoo were the New Hot Thing. (My personal favorite is the one where I dramatically intoned the Green Lantern oath thing, and followed it up with an abrupt character switch into "Meowth! That's right!") And I even hosted an online radio show for a while - I don't remember the site/station name any more, but I went by DJ Cogsworth and I had a fantastic time streaming instrumental anime soundtracks and sharing weird trivia right in the middle of all the other standard electronic/trance or alt rock/metal time slots.
So of course, as streaming media became more... mainstream... (badum tsh) I'd been wanting to get into it in some way. A podcast was my top choice, but I kept fizzling out on content ideas. Livestreaming was out because I didn't want to use my face, just my voice, and I had even fewer ideas about visual content.
Then, about a year or two ago, I discovered the existence of.... VTubers. This was, quite frankly, exactly what I had been looking to do, if I had known it was possible. (To paraphrase how one VTuber put it: I wanted to be an anime character! And now I can be!!)
So I did tons of research, because that's what I do when I discover new things. I watched some video guides on getting started as a VTuber (and skipped at least a dozen more video tutorials that weren't great). I designed a character and watched a whole bunch more tutorials on Live2D. I picked out a name and got about 80% of my character rendered and ready for Live2D, just needing to work out the outfit I wanted them to wear.
And then, without getting into details, Life Happened at me. Again. What little free time and energy I had started collapsing like a star at the end of its lifespan.
...Well, let's not go into the depressing bits there.
The GOOD news is, I'm back at a point where I can think about doing things like that again! But I've decided to apply some lessons from my experiences over the past few years. Specifically, the most important lesson of them all, and advice I give to literally everyone on how to successfully plan out projects:
"Take your goal and break it up into small pieces. No, smaller."
So! Instead of starting out with a full Live2D character doing liveplay streams of solo TTRPGs and chill video games, I'm going to start smaller.
- I'm going to stream as my "it's just me" Caracal persona, under the Glass Dragon Studios brand, rather than starting to build a streamer-specific persona.
- I'll be using a PNGTuber avatar instead of a fully rigged Live2D character.
- The first set of streams will be programming livestreams, working on a coding project I was planning to do anyway.
And from there... we'll see!
P.S. In case you missed it at the top: my first stream will be next Friday, 4pm EST/1pm PST at twitch.tv/glassdragonstudios. I'll be building a traditional-ish MUD-style game from scratch in SpacetimeDB, as a way to learn both StDB and Rust.
I hope you can make it!