This post was written by Andrew Jones, comic artist and web developer. He also runs his own Ustream show. View the original post here.
A lot of artists I follow are now streaming video of their artwork creation via Ustream. It’s a fascinating and educational vehicle for not only fans, but other artists looking to hone their craft. I’ve already learned so much from watching how others approach various challenges. There’s even the new Artcast Network site that serves to aggregate streaming artists under one roof.
I’ve started to do a few Ustream sessions myself, and have found them simultaneously a lot of fun and supremely terrifying. Maybe it’s just my built-in artist neurosis, but I’ve often “chickened out” of doing a streaming session. Usually it’s just the fear that others are watching what I still don’t believe to be anything great. But we’ll save my mental hangups for another post 
One of the biggest hurdles to Ustreaming is the technical setup, as evidenced just last night with Legend of Bill artist David Reddick having to bail on an artcast due to technical difficulties. At some point I may post a really in-depth tutorial on getting started with Ustream, but for now, I’m going to focus on this one aspect.
As a Ustreamer and artist with not much of a following (yet), there are periods where I’m all alone with nobody watching or in the chatroom. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as it gives me some time to relax, but it does get a bit boring. I normally have to have music or something playing while I work. I’d tried several things to try to play music over my stream and still have my voice audible when I speak. Nothing seemed to work right. One night I tried to just play the music over my external speakers and created a weird echo loop that I was sure would rip a hole in the fabric of space-time. Luckily, it did not, but it was more than a little annoying to the viewers.
So the other night I decided to really dig in and try to figure this thing out. What follows is my solution that worked for me, but I’m sure there are many others. Feel free to pass any other good tips along.
