The most famous VTuber so far is Kizuna Ai as you know, and you can clearly see how precise and detail oriented the character is.

Some of you might wonder..

“How do they make the character?”

“How come the character move like human?”

So let’s take a look at more details about the process of making VTuber.

Apparently there’s many ways to  make VTuber, so in this article I’ll state few ways that I know how to make VTuber. Hope you enjoy!

2D or 3D

There’s 2 types of VTuber, which is 2D or 3D. For example, Kizuna Ai is 3D. Other example is 輝夜月 and ミライアカリ.

3D character is way more complicated to make, but it can make the character more precise such as facial expression.

On the other hand, here’s the example of 2D characters. To be honest there are more 2D character than 3D out there due to the reason of complicity to create it.

月ノ美兎

As you can see the difference, 3D characters are more smooth, realistic and precise, but 2D characters are a bit odd and unrealistic compare with the former.

Basically 2D character is easy to make, less expensive, less work and less facial expression, so the first thing you should decide in order to create VTuber is the types of dimension.

Procedure to create 3D character

There are bunch of different ways to create 3D character, but here’s the most popular way.

1. Drew character
2. Create 3D character
3. Try to move character in 3D
4. Film, make videos

①Drew character

Apparently you need a character first, you can’t start without it. Begin with 2D character draft and also decide the character details such as personality.

As for draft, you might want to drew in every singe direction at least front, side ad back so that it’ll make your life way easier when you start to later on when you turn 2D character into 3D.

Also when you drew a character, it’s better to make it symmetric since we use mirroring. Which means you drew half side of the character and other half you can just use mirroring function. However if the character is asymmetric, you’ll have to make both side and it’ll be extra work.

Creating 3D character

All you need is draft of the character and 3D character making tool.  This step is pretty simple if you know how the tool works. There’s free tools out there so you might want to do some research beforehand.

Approximate time of work for this step is about a week. To learn how the tool works could be more time consuming.

Add movement in 3D character

After creating 3D character, you have to activate the movement. In this step, most people use outsource.

Filming

After creating 3D character, film and make / edit videos. In this step, it’s pretty much same as every other YouTubers so it’s simple.

Cost

So.. how much does it cost to make 3D character right?

Facerig / web cam $15-50

Kinect $100-200

VR set $300-500

Motion captcha $2000-50000

Price varies depends on how high quality you’d like to make. And as I state earlier, to add movement in character is the most complicated and expensive step, so how you handle that step can change price widely.

How long does it take?

From the very beginning, it’ll take more than a month if you’re working on this project alone. (I mean it al depends on quality..)

Briefly, you’ll need these skills in order to start VTuber.

1. drew character
2. create 3D character model
3. Environment settings such as Unity
4. Video editing

If you have a team to do this whole project, that’d be more efficient.

Outsource

To improve the efficiency of your work process and save time, there’s a way to outsource. You can just give outsourcing company the ideas you have of the character and they’ll make it they way you want it.

Based on one website I found, 2D character is cost from $5000 and I’m guessing 3D character would be $10000-20000.

 

We, Animel Studio both create character with CG animation technology and manage VTubers.

If you have slightest interest in VTuber, please feel free to contact us at any time!