Client: It Gets Better; Mia Mercer Pride Village Lead
As a digitally native nonprofit and with 40% of LGBTQ+ youth preferring digital spaces over in-person connections, It Gets Better has historically championed the power of online communities. This is why Pride Village: A Digital Pride Experience is a cornerstone of their Pride Month celebrations — to provide a safe space for LGBTQ+ youth who can’t celebrate Pride in person or are still more comfortable expressing their identity in the digital space.
Objective:
A full design and Twitch package that branded this unique event would need to be created. With this being the first event of this kind that It Gets Better was hosting, there needed to be a combination of their brand’s aesthetics and Minecraft‘s aesthetic, while not infringing on the latter’s IP as it was not an officially sponsored event.
Solution:
Minecraft is a block world filled with all kinds of unique life. I was particularly drawn to their pixelated flowers due to their vibrancy and colors that reflect the entire spectrum of the rainbow. I created my own unique, pixel flowers that I could see coinciding with the pre-existing plants, along with a custom “rainbow ore” block to base my designs around. Using these as my base, I went on to create the livestream assets: A “Starting” Screen, an “Ending” Screen, a stinger transition, webcam boxes, and emotes.
Hosts JenIsOnline and Megiibyte react to player’s Minecraft sculpture of two League of Legends’ characters.
A photo of J’s Adobe After Effects workspace while working on “Pride Village”.
EMOTES AND STINGERS
One of my favorite parts of creating assets for Twitch is the abundance of animation I can incorporate into the design package.
Stingers are used to transition from one scene to another during a livestream. They’re typically less than 10 seconds and fully cover the screen in order for A to shift seamlessly to B. This is seen in the video.
Emotes are custom emojis used in Twitch’s chat feature. Each affiliated and partnered steamer can customize them to be used by their community to engage with the stream. The flowers and Minecraft block I designed are examples of these.
Watch the pride
Village Finale
Below is a VOD of the Pride Village Livestream. There you can see the Twitch overlays in action, along with seeing the talent of several streamers which assembled their own areas of the village. Under the VOD is an interactive map of the finished area.