UPDATED 14:50 EDT / OCTOBER 29 2015

NEWS

Twitch kicks off new Creative category with Bob Ross ‘The Joy of Painting’ marathon

While video games helped Twitch become the livestreaming giant that it is today, the Amazon-owned service is slowly trying to expand beyond gaming, and this week it launched a dedicated Creative category for streamers who want to show off their artistic talents.

“All along, the Twitch community has included a determined community of artists, crafters and builders, who have been using Twitch to broadcast their creative processes,” Twitch said in a blog post. “These creative broadcasters share many of the same characteristics as all Twitch broadcasters: passion, engagement, and a community-centric worldview.”

“Today, we’re happy to announce our official support for the Twitch Creative community. There are a few things that make the Creative category unlike anything else on Twitch, so we, along with our launch partner Adobe, are excited to see what you dream up.”

The new Creative category now his its own landing page, which features all of the Twitch streamers currently streaming Creative content. This is the same type of page that allows users to find streamers playing specific games like League of Legends or Dota 2.

Streamers will also now be able to use a set of new tags that are unique to the Creative category, including #drawing, #animation, #watercolor, and #robotics. This will allow users to more easily locate specific types of Creative channels.

“This is unlike anything else on Twitch and we’re excited to see what the community does with it,” Twitch said.

To celebrate the new Creative category, Twitch will be showing a week-long marathon of “The Joy of Painting,” the classic PBS television series starring Bob Ross. The show will begin airing at 2pm PST today on its own dedicated Twitch channel at twitch.tv/bobross, and it will show all 403 episodes of the series, which will run a total of 8.5 days.

In honor of the marathon, Twitch will also be featuring a special Bob Ross Kappa emote, which adds Ross’ iconic perm to Twitch’s popular Kappa emote.

Screenshot via Twitch.tv

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