How to use PochiSta — from idea to exported emote

PochiSta makes custom emotes for streaming and community platforms entirely in your browser. No account, no install.

This page walks through the 6 steps to a finished, exported emote. You do not need all of them — text alone, or a drawing alone, is a complete emote.

1. Type the text
2. Import an image and remove its background
3. Draw by hand
4. Add animation
5. Check it at real size
6. Export everything at once

Type your words in the Text tab. Chat shows emotes at around 24px, so two to four characters stay readable. Picking a style template sets the font, outline, shadow and animation in one go.

Chat renders emotes as a 24–28px square. A long sentence turns to mush the moment it is scaled down. Short words work best.

If you are not sure what to write, the Popular chat phrases section at the top of the Text tab gives you common options. For the look, a Style templates sets the font, layered outlines, shadow and animation together. Your text and placement are kept, so you can switch templates as often as you like.

Drag in your character art or a photo and press the cutout button in the Image tab. Solid backgrounds are cut out instantly; complex ones use an in-browser AI. For photos, the monochrome stamp filter keeps them legible when small.

The cutout picks its method automatically — the button reads "Remove background in one click". A photo shot against a white wall or a solid colour is cut out instantly, with no model download. If the result is poor, press "Not quite right? Redo with AI".

A photo scaled straight down to 24px becomes a greyish blob — you cannot tell what it is. "Monochrome stamp" strips the colours and tonal range so only the silhouette and the broad light/dark areas remain, which still reads at a small size.

Add a drawing layer in the Draw tab and press Draw to draw straight onto the canvas. A stylus uses real pressure; a mouse or finger uses stroke speed to vary the line width. You can undo one stroke at a time.

Scrawled marks like "!!", "w" or an arrow come out too tidy when you type them. Drawn by hand, the energy of the stroke survives.

There are four pens (sign pen / marker / brush / fine liner). The eraser removes whole strokes you drag over — there is no partial erase. What you draw is saved on your device, so it is still there after you close the page (imported images are not saved, as they are too large).

Choose from 16 presets in the Animate tab. Animation is set per layer. Mosaic and blur stay applied rather than animating, so they export as still images.

• Motion: Shake (intense) / Bounce / Spin (360°) / Pulse (heartbeat) / Float (wave) / Zoom punch / Scroll across / Scroll up
• Particles: Rainbow (RGB glow) / Sweat / tears / Glitter & hearts / Penlights / Flame aura / Mosaic / Blur / Emotion marks

Animation is set per layer. You can keep the character art still and shake only the text. The control panel shows which layer you are editing.

Check the preview for each platform's chat mockup at its real size (on a phone, use the Preview tab). Look at both light and dark backgrounds so the emote does not blend in.

The most common failure is "it looked fine while I was making it, but it turns to mush in chat". The editing canvas is large, so you cannot notice this unless you check at real size.

A white emote disappears on a dark background, and a black one on a light background. Check both themes and adjust the outline colour.

Press Export all and you get a ZIP with files sized for YouTube, Twitch, Discord and Slack. File-size limits are handled automatically, with a warning if a file still exceeds one.

If you added animation, platforms that support it get a GIF (Discord stickers get full-colour APNG), while YouTube — which does not support animation — gets a still PNG. Files close to a size limit are automatically reduced, and if one still does not fit you get a warning with the filename.

• How to make emotes that stay readable in chat — character count, outlines and contrast
• Turning a photo into an emote — choosing the monochrome threshold
• Emote creation guide — size and file-size limits per platform