Now more than ever it’s important to create a brand for your channel and set yourself apart from other streamers. Not just that but you want your viewers (and potential subscribers) to engage with you and keep your chat lively!
A great way of doing this is having custom Twitch emotes commissioned that’s unique to your brand and channel. Finding the perfect artist for this is crucial and with this guide we’ll help you do just that! 🙌
Why you should commission custom Twitch emotes
While your Twitch channel logo and overlay might be your main identity and what they are looking at the majority of the time. Custom emotes are also a great way of building your channel brand, increasing chat engagement, and simply making yourself stand out.
Think about it.
Chat is where your viewers and closest fans congregate. It’s where you communicate and share memories. It’s integral to the Twitch and streaming experience.
Part of that experience are the emotes. A big part.
With emotes like Kappa having entered the mainstream we can’t stress this enough. Who knows, at this rate even KKona or ResidentSleeper could be the next thing. 😂
That said the benefits of custom emotes aren’t just limited to Twitch. They are after all works of art. You can use them on your merchandise (clothing, stickers, etc) and digital assets (banners, overlay, etc). Not only that, you can also extend your emotes to your Discord channel.
Where to find artists to commission
Through our research, talks with actual streamers, and personal experience we’ve found that the best place to commission Twitch emote artists is on Fiverr. If you aren’t aware of Fiverr, it started as a site where you could pay a fiver (hence the name) to do some task for you. Anything from a logo to a voice over. Nowadays this runs the gamut as to what you can hire someone to create for you. Among all this goodness is custom Twitch emotes.
Fiverr is home to some of the best artists. Most important though is that there are artists that specialize in just this. They understand that what works for one resolution won’t necessarily translate to another resolution. Something incredibly important to understand since we are dealing with emotes after all. They know the ins and outs of Twitch guidelines since they’ve been doing this for so long.
Not just that. These artists have more experience with Twitch culture and will likely make emotes that are more attractive to the Twitch audience. This is critical for smart brand building.
If you don’t hire someone that specializes in this field then you can expect much more back and forth to explain basics like this.
The best artists to commission
Kong Vector
Kong Vector is a team of 7 designers that focuses solely on custom emotes for Twitch with more 6,000 5 star reviews. In addition to this they have a ton of Twitch verified clients and worked with some of the biggest names out there. They are definitely doing something right!
Right off the bat, they tell you will get the emotes in all three required sizes for submission to Twitch and the vector source file. The vector file is important because it looks good in every resolution no matter how much you scale. This critical in case you want to use it on merch later on.
Kong Vector offers a good deal on set of 6 emotes to get you started. Delivery time is within three days so you won’t be waiting an eternity and you have unlimited revisions to work with in case you want to tweak them.
Feriko Yulianto
The emotes that Feriko Yulianto makes are incredibly polished and very professional looking. Viewers see this and see that you’re serious about streaming and willing to invest in your channel. All without breaking the bank.
You’ll see a three day turn around and unlimited revisions here as well. Unfortunately you won’t receive a vector source file though. The biggest image size you will get is a 600 x 600 pixel .png file. More than enough for emotes, but lacking for merchandise.
Indon Design
Indon Design is the more budget option. If you’re strapped for cash, but still want to do the most you can for your channel then this is the way to go. They offer a decent design at a more affordable rate than their more premium competitors.
The caveat? You won’t get a vector source file or a .png file bigger than those required by Twitch. You’re still getting a three day design time and unlimited revisions though.
Twitch emote ideas to get started
So you’ve decided on which artist you’re going with. Now what?
Well you’ve got 6 custom emote slots to work with if you’re starting with no sub points (more on that later). It’s best to get a set of emotes done rather than just one since there’s a certain synergy that goes with emotes. More emotes means more ways to express yourself after all!
The following emote expressions should be standard in any streamer’s setup and how they are typically portrayed in Twitch emotes:
- Happiness – exaggerated smile showing them pearly whites
- Anger – usually done with the 💢 symbol you see in anime
- Sadness – exaggerated frown and waterfall tears is the way to go with this one
- Hype – jaw dropping and stars in their eyes, another anime homage
- GG – two Gs, a grin, and maybe a peace sign ✌️
- Love – usually expressed with a character and a heart ❤️
- Laughter – sometimes with a tongue sticking out
- Disappointment – typically a facepalm accompanied with a sweat drop
You should pick the six that most often pop up in chat and use those to begin with. Later on when you get more slots you can expand and add more emotes. For starting out it’s critical to get the essentials and then venture out to more obscure and out there emotes.
In any case you will need a mascot. Most streamers opt to use themselves or some sort of animal. It could be anything really even a green blob. The most important is that it is distinguishes you as a channel.
What Twitch has to say on custom emotes
Twitch has guidelines on what’s ok and not ok when it comes to custom emotes. You should take a look over these to avoid any frustration of having to rehire an artist to redo an emote because it wasn’t approved on the first submission. Also repeatedly violating custom emote policy can result in a penalty of your account ranging from content removal, a strike, to even suspension. So take a look and make sure you’ve got everything covered.
Aside from this there are some technical requirements you should be aware of when it comes to submitting emotes. The emote should be in .png format and you will need to submit three different sizes for every emote (28 x 28 pixels, 56 x 56 pixels, and 112 x 112 pixels). Any artist that is involved with making custom Twitch emotes should be aware of this. If not make sure to communicate this with them otherwise you will have to do some converting and resizing yourself.
How many custom emotes can you have?
To begin with you get to have 6 custom emotes to use even if you have no sub points (no subscribers). As you get more sub points you can unlock more emotes. You get more sub points with every subscriber that you get.
When it comes to subscribers you have three tiers and the higher the tier the more sub points you get. Tier 1 subs get you 1 point, tier 2 subs get 2 points, and tier 3 subs get 6 points. So you can have fewer higher tier subs or more lower tier subs and have the same amount of sub points.
This system makes sense since you can have smaller channels with really dedicated fans or bigger channels with more casual fans and both benefit at the same time.
| Subscriber points | Emote Slots | Subscriber points | Emote Slots |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 6 | 1800 | 29 |
| 65 | 7 | 2000 | 30 |
| 80 | 8 | 2200 | 31 |
| 100 | 9 | 2400 | 32 |
| 125 | 10 | 2600 | 33 |
| 150 | 11 | 2800 | 34 |
| 175 | 12 | 3000 | 35 |
| 200 | 13 | 3200 | 36 |
| 225 | 14 | 3400 | 37 |
| 250 | 15 | 3600 | 38 |
| 300 | 16 | 3800 | 39 |
| 350 | 17 | 4000 | 40 |
| 400 | 18 | 4200 | 41 |
| 450 | 19 | 4400 | 42 |
| 500 | 20 | 4600 | 43 |
| 600 | 21 | 4800 | 44 |
| 700 | 22 | 5000 | 45 |
| 800 | 23 | 5400 | 46 |
| 900 | 24 | 5800 | 47 |
| 1000 | 25 | 6200 | 48 |
| 1200 | 26 | 6600 | 49 |
| 1400 | 27 | 7000 | 50 |
| 1600 | 28 | 10,000+ | 60 |
