Reactive images are known to be fun and engaging because of their small animations without compromising the audience’s attention to the streamer or the stream content. Reactive images and streaming through the Discord app will enhance your and your audience’s Livestream experience.
If you’re an aspiring Discord vtuber (or virtual YouTuber) and looking for ways how to add reactive images to your live stream, then you have come to the right place. In this Discord reactive images guide, I’ll explain what Discord reactive images are and list the best tools you can use for your live streams.
What is a Discord Reactive Image?
A Discord reactive image is a set of images or a visual tool that shows whether the streamer is talking or not while streaming their Discord voice call in their voice channel. It can adjust itself by lighting up when your computer microphone picks up sound and dimming down when you’re quiet. Both are visually helpful for the audience since they signal them to either listen to what you’re about to say or focus on the stream content while you’re not talking.
Discord Reactive Images are also great tools for personalizing your streams. These cute avatars can be your profile picture, your cartoon version, or it can be anything you want to represent yourself. A Discord vtuber can even commission other artists to draw for them and purchase their drawings to be used on their stream.
Here is an example of a Discord reactive image used by vtuber Sweetily on Twitch:
Best Discord Reactive Image Tools
Avatar Makers
If you’re new to the idea of vtubing and don’t know where to start or what reactive image tools to use, finding and using a free online image editor is a great place to begin. Below, you’ll find a list of free avatar makers and helpful image editing tools to make your Discord reactive images. These sites are completely free. You can customize, make multiple downloads, and even set the avatars to have a transparent background.
Some of these avatar makers include:
Reactive
Link: https://reactive.fugi.tech/
Reactive is the most popular program for making reactive images. Instead of videos or moving avatars, it requires PNG images for your inactive and speaking images. This would make an incredible stepping stone for a would-be Discord vtuber who can’t make or doesn’t know how to use 2D, 3D, or video avatars yet since PNG images or avatars are cheap, easy, and quick to use as Discord reactive images.
The bounce effect is one of the coolest features of Reactive as a Discord reactive image tool. With it, when you speak, and your microphone picks up sound, your avatar will bounce a little before it stays still again as you continue talking. This is great for catching your audience’s attention when you speak and for making your stream more lively.
By default, Reactive will use your Discord profile picture or photo for the reactive image avatar, but you can always change this to your preferred PNG avatar. It’s also best to use a PNG image with transparent background so that it blends well with the Livestream and looks more interactive.
No worries, though, since you can easily find a free online image editor to edit png images and remove their background. You should also use a high-resolution avatar since a low-resolution photo will downgrade the Livestream experience.
In the example below, I downloaded two images from AvatarMaker.com for the inactive and speaking images. You can see that the inactive image shows the avatar closing her mouth and looking focused.
This will appear on the stream if the streamer is not talking or focusing on the game. On the other hand, in the speaking image, the avatar is smiling and opening her mouth as if she was talking. This appears on the stream if the streamer is talking during the stream.
Streamlabs Desktop
Link: https://streamlabs.com/
Streamlabs Desktop is software used to enhance live streams across different platforms such as Twitch, YouTube Live, Facebook Live, and Discord. As a Discord reactive images tool, it imports the avatar you’ve chosen to be included in your Livestream.
The process for streaming with the Streamlabs app and Discord reactive images is quite simple and takes just a few minutes. To use Streamlabs, you must first connect to a Discord voice channel, preferably a private one, so that nobody can interrupt you while you stream. Then you can use the browser source tool feature, which makes your avatar a browser input and imports it to your Livestream.
In other words, your avatar should contain an accessible link as a browser input. If you do not have a browser input, your avatar will not appear in your Livestream. You will also need to keep the browser source’s browser tab open during the call for the Discord reactive image tool to work.
Using our Discord Reactive Images screenshot example, the individual browser source can be found on the lower left side of the webpage under the Links tab.