Kiki Nightshade Provides Crash Course on How to Be a Successful VTuber

As the growth of influencer culture continues to rise, the interaction with people on the internet continues to evolve. Creators who wish to stay anonymous or adopt an online persona without showing their face have turned to becoming a VTuber who uses a virtual avatar (2D or 3D) to stream or create videos, often on platforms like YouTube or Twitch. Instead of showing your real face, your avatar represents you and moves in sync with your voice and expressions. VTubers’ surge in presence within the influencer space has not gone unnoticed, with Vtuber Ironmouse winning Content Creator of the Year at the 2023 Video Game Awards. At the Ecchi Expo Denver 2025, VTuber Kiki Nightshade hosted “So You Want to Be A VTuber” panel to give a beginner's guide to their journey of becoming a VTuber.

Nightshade explained how she has been working in the tech field for over a decade and streaming on Twitch for over five years. She specializes in DJ streaming for Final Fantasy venues and aims to stream other game content. And because of her experience, she has become a resource for VTubers who encounter tech issues and answers questions via DMs on social media. She says becoming a VTuber is an easier route to creating content and expressing emotions with fans.

“For a lot of people, me included, it sucks trying to put on makeup before jumping in front of a camera to do content creation,” Nightshade said. “So for me, the next best thing is having a cute anime girl to dance around for you. These avatars are animated using motion capture and tracking technology, allowing the VTuber to express emotions and engage with viewers in real-time.”

Even though VTubing can happen using a phone for IRL ("In Real Life," that shows a streamer's spontaneous, unedited real-world experiences), Nightshade pointed out that you’ll need a computer for any game streaming. She recommends using the program OBS, an internet connection of 25 Mbps down and 12 Mbps up for 720p30 streaming. For hardware, she says to look out for a webcam that can record in 720p30 resolution, but cell phones can be used, depending on the app. As for a microphone is advised to have a mic with a built-in gain, but she says having a mic is not necessary.

Whereas it’s possible to stream using a PC with 8 gigs of RAM, the faster the computer, the easier it will be to achieve higher quality streams.

“I've seen on so many occasions where people start out in their streaming with a lower-grade PC, just do the bare minimum, hype up their community to get a really cool avatar, just to go live with it, and then it's just two frames per second, stutters out, and crashes. You don't want to be that person,” Nightshade said. “It sucks.”

When exploring how to create an avatar, Nightshade broke down her options into three budget levels. Also, she says the level of capabilities of the avatar and how fast it runs corresponds to how fast your computer runs and your internet speed.

She outlines budget level one as using Picrew, which is a make-and-play image maker platform that enables users to use different generators for avatars or draw their own art. But she warns to check that the maker of the avatar generator is flagged for non-commercial use to avoid any rules from being broken.

After picking your avatar, she suggests using Fugireact, which works with Discord, which is an instant messaging and VoIP social platform that allows communication through voice calls, video calls, text messaging, and media.

“So it talks to Discord, and it allows you to set an avatar so that when you talk through it, it puts the avatar on your screen and makes a lineup,” Nightshade says. “So very basic, but it still does the job, especially if you have a pretty low-grade PC.”

She says this is a solid option because it won’t take too much of a toll on computers with lower system requirements.

“A really cool thing about Fugireact, because it's a browser source, you're not running anything additional on your PC to get an avatar,” Nightshade said. “It's pretty much just you, it's connecting out to a website, and then it's pulling that information from the website just to be able to do it. So, super helpful, especially if you have a PC with really low system requirements.”

For creators who have a mid-level computer, she recommends using VSeeFace, a free, highly configurable face and hand tracking VRM, and Vroid Studio, in which users can create a 3D model for free.

Nightshade elaborated on the second and third budget levels using PNGTuber, a piece of software that allows more customization for 2D PNG VTubers. She also says you can go to marketplaces to buy customer art to use as a PNG Tuber. She explains how a PNGTuber is a type of virtual content creator who uses static or lightly animated 2D images (PNGs) instead of a fully animated avatar.

The third budget tier usually requires using Vtubestudio, which would also require hiring two people who would be a live2d model artist and live2d model rigger, or acquiring a custom 3D model, which is expensive.

The “So You Want to Be a VTuber” panel offered practical guidance and insight on how to begin a VTubing career.