My new overlay!!

Hey all!

So perhaps I should have started this blog a long time ago, but I just thought about doing it today, and the main thing that I have done recently was created a pretty rockin overlay for my stream!!

When I set out to stream I was looking around at what others were doing and was suprised by the fact that nobody really had a "good" looking overlay! Even popular people had some rather tacky overlays. Granted, people are not there to see an overlay so it doesnt matter that much, but I come from a career field where it is all about presentation! So if I was going to have an overlay, I was going to do it right! In this post give some tips on making an overlay, I will use my Dota 2 overlay as an example, but the principles will apply for all games.

I wanted to make my overlay meet these requirements that hopefully can guide you if you decide to make one of your own:

• It had to be Discrete! Like I said earlier, people are there for the streamer, not to be distracted by the overlay!
• It must match either your style or the games style! If you are a quirky bubbly person, perhaps your overlay should match this. If you don't want to present a certain "style", then just match the game's style(that is what I did)
• It cannot be too 'busy'! Just because you have a lot of content doesn't mean that it has to look soo busy or messy. Remember it is all about presentation, if you have a lot to put on your screen, find a way to make it presentable or people will be distracted and not enjoy their stay.

Complete Cover vs. Blend Cover

You will need to decide on either doing a Complete Cover or a Blend Cover. Both can be good, blends are certainly more challenging, here are some examples:

    Blend Cover

Complete Cover

Both blended and complete covers can look great, it is really just a personal preference.

Getting Started

 I took a screenshot and worked from here. If you make one, I don't recommend using my screenshot as it could be a different aspect ratio from mine, ultimately making yours not fit later on. 

(Click to enlarge)

Now if you are making an overlay that will completely cover the in game one, then I reccomend using Ancient Apparition or Morphling when you take the screenshot since they have bright backgrounds in there profile picture. This is important if you want to know exactly where the edges are that you will need to cover up.  

What to Include?

What do you want to include? I realized that I was getting people asking about the music I was playing, what my game name was, what my social page addresses were, and a few others. So I decided to include all of that in my stream so that I would not have to answer the same questions every stream, I also included a spot for my to put anything I want in(events, announcements, etc...)

What I did:

Blending

I made the decision to blend it with the default Dota 2 HUD, I just like it better that way personally. I played with doing a complete cover, but thought that there was already so much unused space on the current HUD. For me, that decision is really is on a game by game basis. Anywho, If you decide to blend it, take into consideration that most of the time, blending will take more work than a complete cover. When blending you want to maintain the art style already established in the HUD. For example, I wanted to make it look like the GamersCove logo was meant to be there, so take a look at what I did. 

Notice the addition of cracks, surfaces, shading and such. Certainly not perfect, but keep in mind that it doesn't really need to be perfectly perfect, people will be viewing it from a zoomed out view and through a stream. You can get away with not being absolutely perfect. But do keep in mind that although these details are small, they still are what will sell the look. The goal here is to NOT have what you have done noticeable, if they don't notice, then you have done a good job of blending.

By the way, GamersCove is a cool place to go to find other gamers, they host Minecraft servers and really focus on providing a positive community for you! GamersCove.net

Sticking with the Theme

When blending, remember that font is part of the art style, so unless you are trying to match your own theme, try to stick with common fonts. Here is what I did. 

I noticed the font used by the game:               And after some Googling, was able to find it and use it. 

 

In making my music ticker, I wanted to let the users know that the sliding text was the name and artist of the song I was listening to. I thought just saying "Now Playing:" was a bit tacky, so I wanted a picture of a note, but I wanted it to match the style. Eventually, I decided to take the Dota 2 Logo and turn it into a music note, in the end, it turned out quite nice:

Webcam Placement

First, know that you will never make everyone happy, there will always be those that will complain about....well, anything. I chose to put my webcam above my mini map, some people will say it covers up the screen, others will be fine with it. I like it the way it is, very few things will happen off to the bottom right/left side of your screen... Bottom line? Either way is fine.

Have Some Faith!

Finally, just make one! Regardless of what you end up deciding to do, it will be fine! This is hardly a comprehensive guide, this is just supposed to help get you started in the creative process. Help is free, feel free to ask me about this and I will help you.

Tools and Tips You WILL Need!
-Photoshop, Gimp, or something similar.(I have both photoshop and Gimp, I used Gimp since I believe in supporting freeware whenever possible. If you don't have Gimp, get it, it is wonderful. Visit the Gimp Homepage.)
-USE LAYERS!!!(After all my work for my overlay, I probably had like 60 something layers, but I am sort of layer happy! You can never have enough layers)
-Have patience, making a good looking overlay can take time!
-Get some feedback from a trusted source, one that can be honest and isn't just a 'yes man'. AND LISTEN!

Hire Me!

If you are not wanting to spend the time on this, let me know, I work as a web designer full time from home, so my time is valuable, meaning that I cannot do an overlay for free(have to make a living). So let's just say $20 an hour. Doesn't have to be Dota, I can do any game.

I can do a blend overlay in around 1-2 hours. Something more custom will take around 4-6+ hours depending on what you want me to do. 

If you have any questions, leave a comment or say something on my Facebook or Twitter.

Thanks!

Kanoobee