Hello,

Welcome to the third edition of VTuber Spotlight! 🎉 We’re excited to bring you more exclusive interviews with your favorite VTubers and content creators. This is an archived copy from the newsletter, however. Each week we dive deep into new stories, experiences, and creative processes from different VTubers, offering you a unique glimpse into their worlds.

In this edition, we have an inspiring interview with JayChavez. They may not be “big”, but he’s got plenty of experience and insights that they’re willing to share, so we’re excited to present their wisdom to you as well.

Frostyfrog > Hello and welcome to another thrilling episode of the Vtuber Spotlight. I have another wonderful guest here with me today. Would you be willing to tell us a bit about yourself and who you are?

JayChavez > Yeah! Hello everyone, I am JayChavezVT. I’m fine with just being called Jay. I’m just one of your run of the mill variety twitch streamers. I’m not a big streamer, but I stream for fun. That’s always a good thing.

Frostyfrog > What else can you ask for right?

JayChavez > Yeah, yeah, I mean thankfully I don’t have to worry about money or anything so it allows me to be able to stream for fun.

Frostyfrog > So you mentioned that you do variety and that you’re streaming for fun. What kinds of things do you do?

JayChavez > Well, let’s see. Lately I’ve been streaming a lot of lethal company with some friends, HighNinja, Prism, PepsiMan. Then I also stream umm, we kind of decided to stop playing Overwatch 2 for a while, it’s been kind of bad on that one. But I’ve been playing other games as well with some other friends as well, playing Dead by Daylight, Fortnite. I also just finished playing Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, that was actually really fun to play! I really, like, I enjoy the Final Fantasy games. I’ve played like the MMO games, the Final Fantasy XIV, stuff like that, and so that’s always a fun thing to do. It’s just something to kill time. But I’m trying to get out and play other games as well. Then Hades II came out and I want to play that as well. So there’s that

Frostyfrog > How will you fit that in with your busy schedule of Final Fantasy?

JayChavez > I get like one day out of the week that’s not a collab right now then I try to play anything else. Well, for stream wise anyways, otherwise I play whatever during the day.

Frostyfrog > That’s fair enough. So what is your favorite moment throughout your entire VTubing career?

JayChavez > My favorite moment? Oh geez. You know, honestly, I’ve had a lot of fun just by streaming in general, especially this past couple years. Like I said, I don’t get a lot of views, but I’ve made a good amount of friends just by streaming. They come by, hang out, and they stick around. I’ve had one that became a mod for my channel, and now we’re streaming together. We play Fortnite, and I guess we’re going to be playing Dead by Daylight on the next stream. But it went from a viewer to a mod to now a friend to play games with. It’s one of the most amazing things about streaming is that the friendships that you can make while doing it.

Frostyfrog > That is that is absolutely fair. I have even seen a lot of posts online where, I don’t know whether it’s pre-debut VTubers or not, but I’ve seen posts where people are saying, “how in the world can I make friends?” And you just mentioned that you’ve made a bunch of friends. So how do you make friends? Do you have any tips and pointers on that regard?

JayChavez > Honestly, if you find content creators that you enjoy, like the channels you like going to, even if you don’t wanna talk, even if you don’t talk a lot, even then just, every now and then just chiming in on the conversation, ‘cause most of the time they’re not gonna be like “this isn’t a conversation for you to come in to”, like they’re not going to get mad at you for being a part of it. They’re actually, a lot of streamers would actually encourage you to make friends with the other viewers in your in their chat, so… It’s just communication is one of the things and if you’re afraid that’s fine. That’s no one has to you’re not forced to do anything just. Sometimes even just being there is one of the best things you can do. Not everyone’s super talkative. Or they get nervous and they don’t feel comfortable talking. I mean, it makes sense. Not everyone’s the go-getter, you know. No one likes to go out there and get and just talk, you know?

Frostyfrog > Not everyone’s an extrovert. A lot of people are introverts is what you’re getting at.

JayChavez > Pretty much, yeah. It’s like I’m not fully extroverted. When it comes to friends, I pick my friends very carefully. I’m very picky when it comes to who I have as my friends.

Frostyfrog > Speaking of friends and communities where other streamers are talking about making friends with those in the community, other chatters and whatnot. In a sense, even the friends that you make along your journey are part of your community. And with that in mind, what are some major things that you’ve accomplished with your community?

JayChavez > Oh, with my community, we’re not super communicative with each other, but with the friends that I have had, that I do communicate a lot with, we’ve just… it’s fun because you get to be yourself, you don’t have to worry about being judged by other people, you pick fun at each other, you know, it’s like how friends, friendships usually go, you’re gonna pick fun at each other you’re gonna, you mess up you’re gonna get bugged for it, like you know? But it’s also a sense of support too. Especially when you find a group that you’re close with, they’re understanding when something goes wrong. They lend that ear to, or that just the voice to say, I understand and I hope everything starts getting better. They give you support as well. That’s the one thing with communities that are really good, especially if they’re really close-knit. They’re going to be more supportive to helping you out when you need it, even if it’s not just for not even financial support or anything like that. Even if it’s just being there.

Frostyfrog > So to provide, for example, whether it’s emotional support or if you’re feeling lonely to give you the sense of you belong. All right.

JayChavez > Yeah exactly. And the thing is that if you find and if there’s other people that are in the streaming spheres and you’re having an issue, like with say, you’re having streaming issues and if some stuff like software is not working properly and it’s bumming you out or you’re you’re just feeling down because you feel as though you’re not doing as well. You’ve got people that are in that same streaming sphere. They can also give you words of encouragement stuff or even they can just say, hey, you need to take a break. You know? So maybe you’re just suffering from burnout. Maybe you should just take some time off and just relax. Sometimes you just need to hear that.

Frostyfrog > Moving on a little bit to another question I have. Do you put on a character at all or are you your genuine self?

JayChavez > I’m my genuine self. Honestly, that was the whole thing. Like you see content creators that have this lore and stuff like that it’s like… I’m not good with coming up with stuff like that, you know? I just, I feel like I should be myself when I’m doing this because then I don’t have to worry about, “am I in character? Do I have to worry about this or that” or whatever, you know. I could just be me. I’m just me the entire time I’m not having to worry about anything else.

Frostyfrog > So how long have you been streaming out of curiosity?

JayChavez > Oh I came back to streaming on Twitch at around, actually on my birthday in 2019. So, I’ve been, oh, this will be about my fifth year coming up.

Frostyfrog > About five years. That’s a fair amount of time, and I do know that there are a lot of aspiring VTubers out there. Do you have any tips or words of advice for them?

JayChavez > Honestly, if you’re an upcoming VTuber, don’t worry too much about how your character design is going to be for right now. You can make better content if you focus more on the actual gaming aspect or whatever you’re trying to do first. And even if you have to use even just a PNG. That’s really all you need. You don’t have to worry about spending a lot of money. You know, you could focus on the game. Like I said, you could focus on the gameplay that you want. You don’t have to worry about having the expensive 3D model, 2D models. You don’t have a fancy design yet. You don’t have to go flashy at first. You want to see if streaming is for you first because it can be very costly when it comes to being a VTuber. The higher you pay, you’re generally gonna get better quality of product. So like, with the model that I’m currently using, it’s not expensive to get, but if you want to do more with it, you gotta pay more for like hair designs, clothing changes, and stuff like that. That builds up. Even if you wanted to do like a 3d model or something like that, honestly? I would recommend going on booth or Gumroad or something and finding something that you would like to use and It’s not gonna break the bank. You’re not having to pay as much because the custom Live2D be in 3D models can go up to two grand or even higher than that.

Frostyfrog > Right, right. And speaking of which, I know that there’s the site called Picrew where you can do character customization. Not everything there can be used for VTubing, but some of them do say you can use them for a PNG for VTubing or profile pic or whatever, but they allow you to customize and kind of get an idea of what you want your character to look like. But you mentioned two grand and whatnot. Before we started this interview, I mentioned how some of today’s drama has been kind of interesting. One of the pieces of drama that I was looking at involved a VTuber not keeping up on their monthly payments for their VTuber model, and the artist was talking about it and they said that by the end of the year, the person owes $6,000. This is just a 2D VTuber, this isn’t 3D or anything.

JayChavez > Well, it’s a 2d VTuber with a bunch of custom assets for the model and everything else like that.

Frostyfrog > Apparently, it had 40 toggles.

JayChavez > Oh My god, I can’t even think about doing something like that I’m having and I’m having a fun enough time just trying to get my 3d model to work properly without having to worry about any extra toggles or anything else like that. But yeah, it can be very expensive. It’s a very expensive thing, but like I said, that’s why I say you should stream first and see if you like it. Even if before you decided to become a Vtuber you could just do no webcam, you could just play games and just have a microphone and talk. Rven if you’re a mute streamer, there’s a lot of big streamers that don’t talk. Like they don’t talk, they don’t have a webcam or anything but they still get high views and stuff like that. The reason why they stay doing that though is because, they do more than just play games. A lot of content creators even say “don’t just focus on streaming, you should focus on making shorter form content”, 10-minute videos or something, and posting those up on sites like YouTube or making shorts and stuff like that to use for like TikTok and Instagram. Stuff like that, you know?

Frostyfrog > Although 10 minutes is considered long form content. Hahaha!

JayChavez > Yeah, well, yeah, I’m just saying, like that minimum 10 minutes is usually what they would recommend you using for when you’re uploading like longer form content, but you need to spread out and do more than just streaming because I’m making the mistake as well of just streaming I need to be doing more content and stuff like that. I probably would be a lot more higher up, a little bit more in views, if I had actually put myself out there more. But like I said, I stream for fun not for making money.

Frostyfrog > And speaking of streamers who are streaming mute and have a bunch of viewers, one of our future guests actually started out that way in which they did not talk. The closest thing that they did to talking was typing in chat while they’re streaming. And right now I believe they’re using a AI voice thing using… Probably VoiceMod to be honest. I’ll have to ask them about that later. But there’s another perspective that you can look forward to in a future spotlight.

JayChavez > Oh, and that’s the thing with something with a program like VoiceMod. It’s not an expensive program to pay for to unlock everything on it and they have it to where you only need to pay once and everything’s unlocked for good. Even stuff that comes out later on. And so even if you don’t want to share your own voice, there’s VoiceMod that can change your voice. There’s some people that just use text-to-speech and stuff like that.

Frostyfrog > And some of the people I know who started out mute, they started out mute because English isn’t their first language. They definitely did not feel confident in their English speaking skills, which makes complete sense.

JayChavez > Hmm? No, that’s understandable.

Frostyfrog > You mentioned making content on different platforms, not just streaming on Twitch and I know some YouTubers, for instance, make YouTube videos completely faceless. They’ve never shown their face, they’ve never done VTuber models or PNGs or anything and they still have tens or hundreds of thousands of subs on YouTube. So there’s many different avenues to branch out. And with that being said where can people find you what platforms can they find you on?

JayChavez > My main platform of streaming choice is right now on my Twitch channel on twitch.tv/JayChavezVT. I also have a YouTube channel that I was streaming on there before but now I figure I better use that for just my long-form content. It’s the youtube.com/@JayChavezVT, it’s the same thing for that. And then I’ve also been doing multi-streaming on to Kick as well under the same username of JayChavezVT. I kind of try and get myself out there on different platforms, not trying on just Twitch because while Twitch is a nice platform. It’s a great platform. It’s just that there’s a lot more competition and that’s another reason why you should be branching out to other platforms is because it’s hard to get discovered on Twitch unless you can get followed by or you get noticed by the right people.

Frostyfrog > Okay. That can be fair.

JayChavez > But it’s all work. You have to put in the work for it. Otherwise if you’re not putting in the work for it you’re not going to succeed. That’s just general rule of thumb. What you get is what you put in. I mean I can never be as popular as the Frostyfrog right now.

Frostyfrog > I’m not popular!

JayChavez > Haha.

Frostyfrog > Hopefully that changes someday, but this is more about you guys this the whole Spotlight here is… You guys are in the spotlight

JayChavez > It’s a process. But you’re my friend. You know, if you make friends, which you don’t even need to make friends with just the streamers, like, you can make some very good friends just by hanging out with people. Like, that’s just… you know?

Frostyfrog > Mm-hmm All right, it’s getting kind of late here as we sign off for the day is there anything else you’d like to say to our fans?

JayChavez > I just… first off thank you all so much for all the support that you’ve been giving. I… it means so much to me. Even if you’re just lurking in the channel, I appreciate everyone who comes by. It doesn’t matter what you do or anything else like that, as long as you don’t have no drama or anything but just come by, hang out, support, it all matters. I appreciate you all so much from the bottom of my heart, and I can never stop thanking you all so much because I wouldn’t be doing this if I wasn’t getting any- if I didn’t have anyone showing up for the support.

Frostyfrog > Fair enough and save the drama for the drama to tubers they need the content!

JayChavez > Hey, they do better than I do.

Frostyfrog > With that being said, thank you so much everyone and we’ll see you for the next spotlight.

We have many more amazing guests lined up and ready to share their unique perspectives and experiences with you. Stay tuned for more exciting interviews coming your way soon!

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Thank you once again for being a part of this community. We are excited to have you with us and look forward to bringing you the best of VTuber content.

Stay creative and keep shining! 🌟

Best regards,
Frostyfrog
VTuber Spotlight Team