In a detailed primer on creating live animated characters the couple presented at the all-virtual YNOT Summit on Monday, HarperTheFox and Max Mooseman talked about the process of creating Abby Oddly, the world’s first live hentai character – and how that process is changing as the technology used to do it is refined and enhanced.
From the outset, Harper and Max were clear that while the session would be filled with information, viewers who want to follow in their footsteps are facing a steep learning curve.
“I wouldn’t say you’ll be able to walk away from this today and just go make one (a character like Abby) for yourself and just go do it,” Max said at the start of the session. “There are a lot of applications to learn, there’s a lot of hardware to acquire, it’s a pretty technical process and it’s changing all the time – it’s a really fast-moving technology.”
At the same time, Harper and Max explained, “you shouldn’t be discouraged.”
“Stick around and listen to all the pieces, because we’re going to give you the roadmap we took, as well as some of the changes that we know are happening,” Max said, adding that when he and Harper first got started on creating Abby, “we had no animation background, we had no programming, no networking background, basically other than camming we had none of the skill set needed to build something like this – and we learned it from scratch.” In terms of time frame, Max said from when they first started learning how to use all the necessary hardware and software to when they went live with Abby was a “part-time, six or seven-month process.”
Harper and Max began the heart of the session by briefly addressing the backstory and inspiration for Abby, then turning to real nuts and bolts of the process, listing the necessary software and hardware components for creating a live cartoon cam performer of your own.
Among the core equipment and software needed are Adobe Creative Cloud, Newtek NDI, an RTMP broadcaster, a MIDI controller, two computers, a router, two microphones and a webcam. The couple also said it’s important to note that not all cam networks are equipped to handle a
Detailing how the two computers are used, Harper and Max presented a side-by-side chart listing the functions of each computer (see below).
Computer A is where you do the “puppeting” of your puppet, Harper and Max explained, noting that – perhaps counterintuitively – the microphone connected to Computer A should be a “cheap” one, because the audience is never going to hear what that mic records and you don’t want it to pick up anything other the sounds of your speech. Effectively, that mic is only there to “pick up your consonants and vowels.”
The couple described Newtek NDI as a sort of bridge between the animation software and broadcasting component. Newtek NDI “essentially allows you to use your router like a TV switchboard,” Max explained, adding that it allows you to “channel different streams through it.”
Computer B produces the “clean audio you broadcast out,” Harper and Max noted.
As Harper and Max explained, the nature of the way the audio and animation components interact, there’s a bit of delay between the motion of the mouth being determined by Computer A and displayed in animated form by Computer B, leading to a lag that must be accounted for by setting up a delay using the RTMP broadcaster.
“You can tweak that delay sort of back and forth, it takes some experimenting to make your clean audio line up beautifully with your lip synch,” Max explained, noting that this process is not something generally covered in the tutorials people have published about creating live animated characters.
“It simply takes trial and error to just set the delay, speak, look at it, see if it looks quite right and just adjust back and forth until you hit the sweet spot where it starts to look real,” Harper added of the lip synch process.
Harper and Max also covered questions relating to monetizing a character like Abby – an area in which it is crucial to remember the things which have proven successful to flesh and blood cam performers, Harper said.
“Think about how you are managing your cam room and consistently bring people in, bringing in new users,” Harper said. “Because the nature of a live cam site is there is a massive amount of traffic, especially as you’re getting started. It’s very possible you’ll make a big splash, get a lot of people in there (and) it’s easy to forget sometimes that people are coming in constantly and don’t necessarily know who you are, what you’re doing, how to engage with you. They’re curious and they’re interested, but users can be very shy to come out and speak and you want to be consistently – especially for something like this which is so unique and so surprising – to have a little soundbite of who you are, what you’re doing and how people can engage with you and do it on repeat.”
Harper also stressed that, just like with ‘standard’ camming, performers behind the animated characters should “reward the behavior you want, discourage behavior you don’t want.”
“Obviously, if you’re doing this as an income source, you want people to be tipping, you want people to be supporting financially,” Harper added. “Giving the lion’s share of your time and attention to the people who are actively funding what you’re doing is so important. It is extremely likely as you cam more and more that you’re going to get the list of people who are always there, who really like you and who want your time and attention, but if those people are not the same as the people who are actively funding what you’re doing, you have to be ready to have the conversations with them, make them feel good, encouraged, included – but, when someone drops a thousand drops a thousand tokens on you, to divert your attention to them and to reward that behavior.”
While it’s simply not possible to cover in a single hour a topic as information packed as how to create a live hentai cam character, Harper and Max’s primer left attendees well aware of the challenge they face should they decide to take on a project like this – along with the encouragement that while the task may be daunting, anyone who puts in the time, effort and (moderate) expense should be able to bring their animated visions to life.
For those who missed Harper and Max’ talk, YNOT will soon be publishing the video from their presentation and other YNOT Summit sessions. YNOT will issue an announcement on where and how the videos can be viewed once they’ve posted.
