Aiko singing with Miku's voice

Today I was checking out the progress of Project Aiko. It is a pretty impressive fembot taking account that it is mostly built by one man. He has always been fascinated by robotics and anime. The major push came from watching Chobits.

Anyway in one old video posted to Project Aiko homepage I discovered that he has made Aiko sing and to my big surprise the voice was all familiar Hatsune Miku singing the opening theme of Record of Lodoss War Anime. I guess it was a live performance. In the future Aiko might use Vocaloids for primary speech synthesis, but the status of this development is not known.



Citing Le Trung "Aiko singing opening theme song from Record of Lodoss War Anime. I have tried integrating Vocaloid with the BRAINS software for the first time. It doesn't go as well as I have hoped (too much echo), but it's a start."

PS. And a warm welcome to our new follower :)

EDIT:
I got a reply from Le Trung. It seems it won't happen soon, but no need to bury the hope yet! Citing:
"I am still working on it slowly. Due to back to school.
Don't really have much time to work on Aiko."

Miku Live Performance - Miku's Day

You might remember Miku's first Live Performance and the blog entry about it. While that was simply showing videos of Miku on a big screen, thanks to the wonders of Science, something thought to be impossible has been made possible - a full 3D "hologram" of our beloved Vocaloid on the stage. The technological miracle making this all possible is called "Transparent screen Projector". I really don't know about the details, but you can see the amount of realism it gives when compared to an average screen.

The models used are 99% perfect, you can still notice some artificial elements, but overall, it is very smooth and lifelike, the little details like changing the outfit during smoke bursts are just the little bit extra that make it even better.


The only thing that I couldn't get used to would be her size. But it is also understandable and reasonable - if they can make her visible from all across the concert hall, why not do so?

For more pictures, info and all the videos, go to Sankakucomplex.

EDIT:
First of all, I would like to apologize for the confusion on why both blogkeepers wrote on the same subject - after same careful analysis from a hired chimp squad, it turns out that we started writing the posts at the somewhat same time, so neither of us knew that the other one was already writing. I actually discovered the 2nd post 3 days later.
Second: As Toomas already said, Sega has forced youtube to remove all videos of the show, thus everything we embedded earlier might or more probably, will not work. If I manage to find reuploaded versions or videos on niconico, I will edit this post again.

Miku's Day live consert!

On 9th of March at Zepp Tokyo concert hall something special and heartwarming for all Miku fans happened. The most spectacular Vocaloid concert this far was held there called "39's Giving Day" ("39" like "sankyuu ...", like "Thanks Giving Day"). It featured a wide on stage transparent screen where Miku, Luka, Rin and Len sang some of their best known hits and not just hits, but many of those I like. Unlike some previous "live events", this time I wish I could be there.



Judging from the concert footage, over a thousand visitors attended and were very pleased with the show. The virtual stage was all for vocaloid, but the non-vocal part was performed in whole by live band as it seemed to me (I wonder who they were...) Even tho the sound quality is a quite poor it is not a waste of time to look at the video footage. I did get a concert feeling. They even faked the microphone too close to speakers feedback resonance :)

EDIT: As Sega is not interested in sharing the concert footage, it is eager to take down all the concert videos from Youtube. Unless they have plans to release the concert on DVD or Blue Ray, I don't understand their actions. But for introduction purposes I still try to keep some concert content in this playlist so that people far far away from Tokyo can get a bit of feeling what such a concert is. In good faith I believe that this does no harm.

The playlist has shrunk to the concert commercial, a small part of the concert and one interesting behind the scenes capture from one previous such event.



In case you're curious the official site is here (tho I guess it's not much useful any more).

EDIT: As I can see, Riho was also very interested in writing about this event. Honestly, I didn't know about that. :D

Vocaloid Madness

AS Toomas pointed out, there are no real animes about Miku, but there is the program called MikuMikuDance which in it's simplest form allows to make your character dance. If you are skilled enough and/or have enough patience, you can even make short clips with it and here is an example. It shows all of your favourite Vocaloid characters doing all kinds of weird things together and to each other with some funny narrative.



To say it is "chaotic" would be underrating it.

Merge!

Sharing a rare find of Aeris from VGCats comic and Miku merged together. Excellent work by the creator of VGCats Scott Ramsoomair!


Pic from here.

The Nearing Future City vocaloid fanime

There is no such thing as Vocaloid anime. Those videos you find in Youtube are just fan made videos accompanying some song, MMDs, parodys, "openings", "trailers", etc but none can be called "anime". I saw one calling such stuff fanime, so let me use that word too.

This one almost got me, it looks professional enough, long enough and has a story behind it. You may argue, but this is the most anime-like vocaloid video I've seen. Still, it is only fanime, but a good one. Whole 8 minutes of jazzy Miku and Meiko compilation for your enjoyment.



Music is by SuzukazeP [涼風P]. The songs are from Near Future City series (近未来都市シリーズ) witch you can start watching from here in NicoVideo. The whole concept also has a webpage where you can find songs and some artwork. The series is hard to follow in Youtube, but you can get something clicking here. I don't quite understand it, but it seems to a collection of songs in multiple albums. Still the whole theme promises more.

Here is one song pick from Youtube.



This may change since I haven't listen to all these songs, but one of my favorite is this (only in NicoVideo)

I guess it is not a coincidence, but the there is an animation Iron Giant from USA that is quite similar to the one used in the first video I posted here.

EDIT: Corrected one typo in the title. I am sorry for misunderstandings it caused.

Snow Miku

We've just got lots of snow, but some people out there have Snow Miku. She's huge, but cute still.





By gsc-mikatan? found here.