Wiki Wednesday #92 - Lumina Silaeta

No fraction starting off this article. I technically started it in time to get one last article in and actually beat the dice, but that's kind of silly after I did a write-up on how I did! I'm planning on just going to the top of the list and continuing onward. Lumina was #7 in the spreadsheet. She only has two before her who haven't been done. Those two actually have a lot of banks to look at, so I just was like "okay, short and simple. This is only one bank. I can get down to serious in a day or two."

Wiki Wednesday #92 - Lumina Silaeta

So, when I started this series, I contacted Lumia's voice provider... and I don't think I ever heard back. Now, I can't even find the voice provider at all. This is legit scorched-earth territory saying "Please do not associate me with UTAU in any way." But, the download is still up, so... That's that.

Watch someone comment telling me where Lumina-P is and how it was super obvious and how did I not know that?!! (I did it to myself. Lumina's character art isn't packaged with her bank, so I needed to get it from the Wiki. I dragged and dropped it into my folder and saw the username that uploaded the image to dA. I got really excited because she last posted in October of 2018, meaning she was definitely still active because it just became 2019! No, Mae. 2018 was two years ago. It is 2020. It is half way through 2020 at time of writing.)

Who is Lumina Silaeta? 

Official Art, Yoink'd from the UTAU Wiki

Lumina is packaged with exactly zero supplementary material beyond... a UST? All information on her is coming from the Wiki page. The Wiki page was managed by her voice provider, so I do believe she posted all relevant information. (I'll just say it here, there was a bank that was finished, but not released. Why ya gotta break my heart? Telling me it's out there, but keeping it out of my hands!)

Lumina is 5'2'' and one hundred pounds. She underweight, but not by much. Her design is meant to be Goth, but if you ignore the skull and collar, she's definitely closer to punk in dress and her hair is one hundred percent scene. Is emo still a think with the kids? Was that a my generation thing? We all wanted to be Enoby, and now everyone wants to be an and i oop. Lumina was released with an age of "idk, teen?" in 2013. I didn't catch the voice provider's age, so no telling how far removed she was from emo. 

Lumina doesn't really feel on the inside how she looks on the outside. She's really a prep, who is really sweet and bubbly.  

I'm not calling Lumina a Mary-Sue, but something in her bio reminded me of my youth. Mary-Sue is an extremely old concept, being born from a freaking Star Trek fanfic. But, as a former avid roleplayer, I kind of saw the evolution post Eternal September and how the snarky-butts (not a real term) reacted to them. I didn't even think about Mary-Sues reading Lumina's bio until the line "Though she does have flaws..."

Small flaws, especially ones that were adorkable (is that still a thing?) like being clumsy were tacked onto characters who were dancing over the Mary-Sue line to make them not perfect. But, like, it didn't really work like that. It just became an extension of the Mary-Sue trope as opposed to getting the author away from it. Her flaws are being rude to people who are mean and being lazy.

But dang it! Lumina wants to sing with you!

How is Lumina Silaeta's bank? 

After last week, I had the hugest dang sigh of relief that Lumina was hiragana encoded. It's a one pitch VCV bank. Listening to the samples by themselves in Windows Media Player, you can hear that there are some obvious issues with tone and recording environments different. Some are little muffle baby, and some are stronk. Some are close to the mic, and some are farther away. However, UTAU is a champ and can iron over those issues like a train. The average pitch is E4.

The OTOs are bad.

nerdecrafter Jackie voice: "why-uh you-uh break-ah my heart?!"

The voice is so cute and sweet, though. I want to give her the best chance possible, so say Hello to Setparam, Lumina! Her samples are insanely short, so SetParam did an awful job auto-generating from my normal parameters, but at least I can drag and drop easily to put them in the right place and I love this voice and I love this design and I want to hear her at her best. 

Strangely, the ん samples were incorrectly recorded in places "んあ" was recorded as "な" and I'm not sure why. It's correct in other places.

There are mistakes that everyone makes when they're new to VCV in here. There's nothing more wrong in here than any other VCV Act 1. The biggest issue being the need for a pop filter, which I don't know how to edit to fix in VCV within the OTOs. I love the voice, but there are some things you'll need to work around.

Where can I download Lumina Silaeta?

You can download her from her UTAU Wiki page. I want more Lumina banks, dang it. Her voice is cute, and her design is cute, and I just wish that her Act 2 VCV had been released.