Rant: Vocaloid Popularity Contest

People keep saying things like "bad character design" or "bad boxart" but at the end of the day these are vocal synthesizers. The popularity of a song or character has nothing to do with the images or Vocaloid publisher. Its all about the music and the producers behind them. How skilled is the producer and how much EFFORT is he or shee is willing to put in?

The popularity of the music is entirely on the music producer's shoulders, not the fandom, and certain't not the Vocaloid company. You can't publish a 'medeocre' or hell, even 'outstanding' song, fail to market it, and then blame the fandom/person you bought the software for the lack of the song's success. I am not going to buy FL Studio and then blame Image-Line that my original song only has 500 views.

If you want your song to be popular you need to put the work in, that is something most people aren't willing to do. There are of course shortcuts of course, shortcuts many people aren't shy from taking. If you want views, suck at marketing you work, then the obvious route to take is cover something already popular, like Linkin Park, or cat songs, since they are already popular they almost market themselves! [/sarcasm]

I will give you two examples of 'proper' marketing from Western producers, one who uses Miku, Gumi, & Gakupo amongst other JP-loids and the other, an early adopter of VOCALOID1 Engloids, which have no official character images or art, and created an entire virtual singer & mythos, from scratch, to represent his work.

Rant: anaROBIK vs Fanmades

I have been talking about anaROBIK a lot on VO, particularly because she is a great example of Vocaloid being used as an 'instrument' rather than as a 'character'. Recently she was brought up in a discussion about fanmades.

For those that don't know about her, I have coverage on Engloids.Info

Now personally, I dislike fanmades, I think the idea around them is stupid, and now that there is over 40 different Vocaloid 1-3s, not even counting the various appends, I see little use for them outside of the headcanon of the the fandom.

In many ways she is similar to fanmades: She is a non-canon character, developed by a fan, derived from a Vocaloid voicebank. Despite her origins I don't consider her a 'fanmade'. I point you to why I like her so much. She is an example of Vocaloid being used as an 'instrument' rather than a character.

You must keep in mind that anaROBIK is derived from Zero-G's LOLA voicebank, one of the earliest VOCALOID1s and Robert Hedin (anaROBIK's producer) was one of the earliest adopters. This was a different era, the era before Miku, before Vocaloid2, an era where the concept of fanmades hadn't even been conceived.

Hell, even today the 'concept' of LEON & LOLA that comes to mind when you think of their characters is entirely fanon. If anything the modern ideas of Leon & Lola's characters are all fanmade. The only official art is the one that graces their boxes.

But alas, we are getting sidetracked. Lets get back to anaROBIK...

Ramble: Letter to Fandubers

Dear Fandubers,


Heavily autotuning your voice does not make you sound more like a Vocaloid.


Love,
Hentai
XOXOXOXOX

Rant: My Love, Hate, and Fear of Oliver

In many ways I have a love-hate relationship with Vocaloid and its fandom.

I loved the Engloids but many times find myself at odds with parts of fandom. With the debut of Oliver the fandom's reaction was diverse. He received a wide range of reactions ranging from for fangasmic gushing to barely considerate shrugs.

That being said some reactions made me RAGE and sometimes I forget how young, and sometimes immature we can be as part of a fandom. I was seriously upset and disappointing in some of the comparisons and extreme reactions people were making with Oliver.

No, I am not talking about comparisons people had with Len, we will get to that later, but rather the parallels people were drawing with VocaTone staffer Sango's UTAU Neko Kanochi. People were saying that Neko wears and eyepatch and Oliver has one too! They must OBVIOUSLY be related amirite? [/sarcasm]