Welcome to Streamers on the Rise, where we find streamers who are growing their channels, content, and audiences in extraordinary ways. Each week we’ll talk with a creator about what goes into livestreaming–both on and off camera.
Suto has always been a hustler, and she’s always had hobbies.
And over the last few years, her hobbies have had a habit of becoming hustles.
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She grew up doing art as a hobby, and that’s how she first got into the content creation space: She found a niche making YouTube graphics and thumbnails for individual creators and for esports teams. While she worked on their stuff, she ended up watching their content, and then watched other people’s content, and more, and more. But she didn’t consider becoming a creator herself until her brother “gave me that nudge,” she says.
“He’s like, ‘I think that you would be really good at this,’ because I just have that natural ability to talk to people and make people laugh,” she says.
She tried Twitch–again, just as a hobby–and made partner within her first few months, which attracted the attention of esports team Energy. They signed her to its roster to create content about games like Overwatch, Smite, and RuneScape. She embraced that this was more than a hobby and dove in, “just trying to fulfill the full-time stream dream.”
That dream took some work. There were “a lot of bumps,” Suto says, and she ended up taking a couple breaks, including one during COVID. A big breakthrough for her streams came from weaving in her art with gameplay.
“I started streaming Fortnite, but I would do art sometimes. I would stream my full weeks, and then every here and there I would do an art piece for the game that I was playing, but I would stream it underneath that category,” she says. “A bunch of people saw the Fortnite artwork. I went from 30,000 followers at that point in time and went up to 100,000 followers, and I decided to make the jump to art, and have been streaming art full-time.”
Building her brand on her art has now gotten her Twitch channel up to 130,000 followers, and it’s also brought her some wild opportunites: She’s made custom sneakers for esports teams and musicians like Offset and Marshmello, painted live at multiple Capitol Records concerts, designed PC cases for PowerGPU, did artwork for Gamer Supps, is working on painting “gamer cars” for Honda, just had a front page Twitch feature collabing with JDS Sports, is collaborating with Cooler Master, and is working with Beacons.
Check out our chat with her below.
We got some more work to do on this Sneaker X PC!
The boys over @ @CoolerMaster will bring this safely home and will finish it soon! Be sure to stay tuned and follow!
What do you guys think so far? ^.^
Huge shoutout to the team! Honestly had a blast! 🤪🔥🥰💅 pic.twitter.com/DCdPRP9TvD
— Suto (@SutoCustoms) January 12, 2024
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Tubefilter: It’s nice to meet you! I’d love to start with some background about you. Imagine somebody is reading this and they don’t know anything about you, they’ve never seen your streams. Tell me a little bit about where you’re from, any cool hobbies you had as a kid, and what you did before you started streaming.
Suto: Everything that I’ve done has been a little bit accidental. I think that’s what makes my career so fun. I was born and raised in Aspen, Colorado, and then I spent most of my adult life in St. George. I haven’t always been in California. I moved here for my career. There wasn’t a lot where I was from. I think St. George, Utah, the mentality is you go to college, and then you get your degree, and then you get a career. I did exactly that.
I actually got my bachelor’s degree in business administration. I used to work for an electronic company. I had a paid internship there that turned into a job-job. I was doing software development and marketing and a bunch of really cool stuff. On the side, I used to freelance graphics for esports teams.
Tubefilter: Oh, very interesting.
Suto: Yes. I’ve always had a side hustle no matter what I do. That also falls with my career as well now, too. I was doing graphics for teams, whether it’s their branding or YouTube thumbnails. I just decided to try streaming for myself. I was always watching content creators while I worked. My brother gave me that nudge. He’s like, “I think that you would be really good at this,” because I just have that natural ability to talk to people and make people laugh.
I tried it out and I got partnered within my first six months of streaming–like six, seven months of streaming. I got partnered back in 2016. Then, from there, I got signed to the esports team Energy, and I started just trying to fulfill the full-time stream dream. It took a while. There were a lot of bumps. I took a year break. I took another break during COVID. I think a lot of us got that feeling of isolation and needed to take our breaks, but everything went well, I guess.
What I mean by accidental is, I just have always done…These are my hobbies. Streaming was my hobby and I turned it into a passion. Art was my hobby, and I turned it into my career as well, too. I originally got partnered playing games. I was signed as an Overwatch content creator, and then full-time Smite content creator, full-time old school RuneScape content creator. I’ve been everywhere. I tried a little bit of everything.
Then Fortnite came out. I think Fortnite was the era for a lot of content creators to see real growth and potential. I started streaming Fortnite, but I would do art sometimes. I would stream my full weeks, and then every here and there I would do an art piece for the game that I was playing, but I would stream it underneath that category. A bunch of people saw the Fortnite artwork. I went from 30,000 followers at that point in time and went up to 100,000 followers, and I decided to make the jump to art, and have been streaming art full-time.
Then I saw my streaming career change as well, too, because one thing about content creators is we usually have a really good relationship with game developers and companies. We do a lot of activations with them. One thing I was worried about was losing those potential collabs because what’s cooler than growing up and playing video games, but then being able to work alongside them?
I was able to still do activations. I found a fun new way, that Twitch actually caught onto as well, too, and they loved it as well, where instead of just live streaming the video game, I did some contract work with Blizzard if they had a new hero drop, I would paint that. You would still be able to get your loot drops from my channel. It would just be something that was different.
Then from there, Adidas made an anime sneaker collab drop for DBZ. I was so excited about it. I love DBZ, but I hated the shoes. I was so sad. I was so sad. My community was like, “Well, why don’t you just make your own?” I thought about it for a second, and I was like, “You know what? That’s a good idea.” I did, and then esports teams caught onto it.
This massive boy IS DONE TONIGHT!
Come hand out! Drinks and paints ^.^ https://t.co/Ldh4jLP8Pw pic.twitter.com/BR1LUBsk4u
— Suto (@SutoCustoms) January 25, 2024
Tubefilter: So you made your own shoes!
Suto: Yes. Actually, I can show you. I do this as well, too. I have stuff like this where I’ll hand-paint. It’s a whole community, right? I got into the lifestyle, the culture. I started working with rappers and musicians. I’ve done sneakers for Offset and Marshmello, and then that grew my career just a little bit more, but in another niche. We had the gaming, then we had, “Oh, the artwork’s cool.” Well, now we’re doing sneakers. I was able to find fun new ways to also include other things that I love, like music. I love music, so being able to work with some of my favorite musicians.
I’ve been able to paint live at Capitol Records. We painted live at multiple concerts, where we just had our own little setup. I’ve been able to be a little designer. Fashion’s really important, I think, for music and celebrities. I’ve been able to do a full kit for people, so custom jacket, custom shoes, custom pants, all hand-painted. I did that for a while.
Like I said, before COVID hit a little bit, first year was really great for a lot of us content creators, we saw a huge peak, and then we slowly– and we’re still seeing that drop, where not only do we have more content creators, but I think that we’ve hit that time where we’ve had plenty of top content creators reach their downfall where they’ve been canceled and people’s trust has been betrayed.
For me, when there’s a lot going on in the community, I always have this weird need to switch things up. My favorite thing is just I have a very wide range for a community. A lot of people usually just assume that as a female content creator, you have a lot of men that watch you. I do still have more male-to-female ratio, but I have a lot of families. I have a lot of families and their kids. My oneo-of-one cost, it’s up there. I try to keep my prices as low as I can.
I was like, okay, well, let’s go back to canvases for a little bit, and maybe we can find a way to turn those into prints. Now, in 2024, starting late– like the very, very end of 2022, I did my first booth and I decided to start doing mass production. My art is way more affordable. It can go anywhere between $30 all the way up to the one-of-one price.
Doing conventions is really fun as well too. Not only do I get a network, I’ve seen this shift where instead of being invited out to CES by Logitech to paint them shoes and help represent their brand, now I’m going on behalf of myself and I’m growing my brand. All of these industry people have been reaching out to collab with me.
Suto is still this fun, derpy, loud, gremlin-type energy stream. If you need your serotonin, you have that, but now it’s also becoming that name where if you go over to PowerGPU, you have custom Suto PC cases you can get. If you go to Cooler Master, they just launched the new MasterHub. I’m collabing with them. Then I work with Gamer Supps, and do artwork with them for their waifu cops.
Honda’s reached out and we’re going to do gamer cars with Honda. What else? Beacons. We had a great meeting with Beacons. They want us to do the usual streamer test product, but they’re like, “Let’s do some collabs where we have you design some stuff.” Just like you see it with esports teams. I think FaZe did it first, but in my opinion, 100 Thieves has done it a lot better, where you have this great mix between lifestyle and content.
I have that background in lifestyle because I spent two years just doing lifestyle. I even had a popular podcast with Twitch. We would go out and we would review all the new drops for sneakers, or we’d go to ComplexCon and we’d have special guests on the show. Now, there’s just this big hub where it just started as this wholesome little game streamer and art was always just my little hobby, and people were interested in the art that I had in the background of my stream. I started livestreaming art and then I was able to take the extensive background I have in graphics and esports teams and how they function and apply myself to that and then grow in there.
Now I’m just this business, this brand, but also this content creator. I think the coolest part about it is because I prioritize both my content with the business, is that anytime I collab with anybody or anytime anybody orders anything, you can watch it live on my stream. If I’m doing a collab with Twitch, like we just had a front page feature with JDS Sports. They’re from the UK. Just launched a couple stores here. We painted some live sneakers live on stream with them. I actually had that collab with somebody you did a profile on as well too. The Call of Duty streamer, Repullze.
Tubefilter: Oh, yes! Yeah, he’s great.
Suto: That’s another thing, is I work with content creators a lot. You can go to the background of a lot of streamers and you’ll see my artwork. If you go to Nogla, he’s really popular from the Minecraft scene, but he also started on YouTube. I painted his whole wall. I’m just everywhere.
I need to do a Solo lvling canvas!
Anyone interested I’ll discount!
24×30 originally 2.5k now 1.6k
30×40 originally 4k now 3k pic.twitter.com/ETEvRdJirk— Suto (@SutoCustoms) February 22, 2024
Tubefilter: You have lots of pursuits.
Suto: Always on the move. It’s been interesting though, starting content and just slowly relying on content is like…And people that don’t have like the same type of business model that I have, because if you think about it, it’s like, okay, you commission– say you buy artwork from me. Okay, well, I’ve already been paid for that service. Now I’m going to go live. While I’m live, I’m gaining followers, subscribers, donations. I’m furthermore gaining profit from the same thing in which I’ve already been paid for.
Then even furthermore, I discount people if they allow me to make prints, which is like a backwards way of doing that. Usually, if you have the original, it’s worth more. It’s to help me build my portfolio, because I haven’t been doing prints and I can’t backtrack and just start selling prints from prior commissions because that’s shady.
Tubefilter: Yes, totally.
Suto: Then, now, I also sell the prints, and so it’s like, there’s three sources of passive income per every commission that I can potentially do. I think that’s the coolest thing. I do have a background, my degree is in business, but this was all accidental. I think that’s the greatest part about it. I love the community. I’m exceptionally loyal. I have been on Twitch. I haven’t tried Kick. This has just been my home, and so I stay here. I definitely dabble with TikTok. I think TikTok is great for content creators. We saw that we all peaked and then we were like, “Okay, well, what do we do now?” Because Twitter’s slowed down. Twitter used to be the main platform for content creators. Now we’re like, no.
Tubefilter: Artists too.
Suto: Yeah. Now it’s TikTok for a lot of us, which is so interesting to me. I was so not on board with TikTok at first. I was like, “Oh, no, what is this?” Now, I like it, because you actually see a really good turnaround for it for someone like myself who’s newer on it as well, too. I don’t feel like I’ve tried half as hard on that platform as I have anything else, and you see the good turnaround for it.
Tubefilter: I’m glad you have the revenue stream from selling prints now.
Suto: What’s crazy to me is, the fact that it’s as viable as it is. I think every content creator…Well, a lot of us have that imposter syndrome of like, “Oh, this could be gone tomorrow.” My community has definitely proven to me that they’re never going to leave, even with the breaks that I’ve had to take. Art is the same. We have the whole AI stuff that people are so afraid of.
Tubefilter: That’s a huge stressor.
Suto: I think when you have your own unique design, AI can only pull from what already exists. It’s one of those things where even though I do both physical, I do digital as well too, but I think I can understand where the mentality from digital artists, they’re a little bit more skeptical, but also at the same time, I’m extremely supportive of that fact because I think that AI is not going anywhere. We see a lot of game developers using it now. Maybe not a direct rip, but at least for concepts. Even if an AI can generate concept, it still can’t perfect it. You’re going to need an artist for that no matter what.
Who knows, 10 years from now, maybe it’ll be different, but at least for right now, I think that it can be a stressor, but as long as you already have your name and you’ve already been doing commissions, people are going to go.
I think that’s the one downside about art, is you have to build a name first. If I just decided to start streaming on Twitch and doing art, I don’t think it would have the impact that it had that I built my community first and then started doing art.
Tubefilter: Yes, it’s just been tough. It’s just been tough going with the AI thing.
Suto: Yes, okay, I can see that a little bit more. Yes. It’s interesting. It’s a very heated debate across the board with artists. For me, I think that I realize it’s not going anywhere, and with a lot of things. Even if there’s content creators that haven’t been the best on their platform, you see them getting banned after ban, rightfully so, not for biased opinions. I think that we’re always going to be troubled by things that we don’t want in our community or want in our workflow and in our business, but being able to figure out a
The next thing I want to do is I really want to do a concept for video games. I would love to design characters. I love Final Fantasy XIV. It’s my main game right now.
Tubefilter: I know we’re running out of time for this call, but real quick, I had wanted to bring up FFXIV to you! I was going to ask if you’re interested in trying Pictomancer when it comes out.
Suto: Yes. Oh, I can’t tell you how excited I am. I hate to fall into that, like, “Oh, that’s me!” thing. You know what I mean? But I get to be an artist in real life and in my favorite game. We all thought it was going to be Green Mage. Viper was obvious. Then Beastmaster was obvious, but for the magical DPS, everybody was like, “Oh, it’s going to be Green Mage. It’s going to be Green Mage.” There were a bunch of people that knew that it would be Pictomancer, but in my circle and online, most people assumed that it was going to be Green Mage.
It was really cute because I’ve never gotten so excited while watching something be released. I was just in my office and my partner was in theirs because they also work from home and we were both watching it, but I still had to run in and be like, “Oh my god, look, it’s me!” I don’t play physical DPS either. I’m a melee, but I’m going to switch just for that.
