This illustration was viewed by a member of the J-Pop group Supercell, and it inspired him to create a song using Hatsune Miku. For example, there is a partnership with Good Smile Racing that features Miku artwork on cars, sponsorship deals for winter festivals in the city of Sapporo where Miku is prominently displayed in the city, a series of video games produced by Sega, as well as being referenced in various anime.īlack★Rock Shooter started off as nothing more than an illustration uploaded to the Pixiv artist community by Fuke Ryohei, better known as Huke. The internet was then awash with music videos, pictures, songs and all sorts of art created by fans.ĭriven by the popularity of fan involvement Hatsune Miku has also enjoyed plenty of commercial success and been referenced in other media. Their lax attitude allowed their community to flourish, and in turn allowed Hatsune Miku to reach critical mass appeal by allowing her to morph into whatever fans needed or wanted her to be. In addition to creating the software and character design, Crypton then made a genius move by creating their PIAPRO online community where fans and artists were allowed to share derivative works made using Hatsune Miku.Ĭompanies typically defend their intellectually property rights vigorously, but Crypton did the opposite, which would seem unthinkable in today’s climate of intellectual property protectionism. The distillation of this freedom came in the form of Hatsune Miku, courtesy of Crypton Future Media, the most widely recognized and popular Vocaloid character. This allows artists who do not have the singing chops or access to a professional singer the freedom to still create a full song on their own. The software package would then be developed by Yamaha who was targeting professional musicians and computer users with musical ability.Ī user has to program in a melody and lyrics that are then combined with synthesized recorded vocals, leading to a complete song.

The groundwork for this craze was laid back at the turn of the century as a research project to develop signal processing by a professor at Pompeu Fabra University - with the backing of the Yamaha Corporation. Humanoids that are given a voice through Vocaloid software, which is a voice synthesizer, have become popular in the last few years.

Vocaloids my anime list