Axfc is a jerk. Here's my post on how to get downloads from there to work.

Multi-pitch CVVC banks do not work properly with the shareware A for automatic button!! Any articles where I complain about CVVC banks being broken is my own fault for not figuring it out sooner!!

Friday, November 5, 2021

Forgotten Friday #150 - honoca_2's 空架-kuuka-

 Whoo! I think I might actually be able to reach my completely arbitrary and meaningless goal!


Forgotten Friday #150 - honoca_2's 空架-kuuka-


On one hoof, I’m really glad that the family I just wrapped up got wrapped up. On the other hoof, this UTAU has no bio data beyond the fact that she sounds like a woman, but you’re allowed to just give her whatever gender you want. And I picked her.

Apparently, her name means “empty shelf” in Chinese. I pasted it into Google Translate when I meant to paste it into Jisho. If that is the case, why does Google Translate say that her name is “fictitious” when translating the entire page? It can’t even figure it out when I mash the “listen” button on Google Translate. The romanization at the bottom is the correct “Kūka”, but the voice says “soraka”. 

And I still have two hooves to consider other possibilities! See why saying on the other hoof is fun and useful? Though, given that I currently posses zero hooves, it is just as realistic to say on the other hand four times. 

I just like My Little Pony a lot.


Who is Kuuka?

Art from Visual Archive 

Wednesday, November 3, 2021

Wiki Wednesday #139 - 甘音セト / Set Amane

 Hurrah hurray! This is the last usa-utau bank in this word document! So that means, going in order of the word document as I have been doing, no more usa-utau banks for almost twenty articles straight! Pretty cool! 


Wiki Wednesday #139 - 甘音セト / Set Amane


Just one more article tonight. If I do five a day, I'll hit my goal of winning Nanowrimo during the wrong month by not writing a novel! Also, the daily exhaustion kicked in and my current computer chair requires effort to sit in because there's no arm rests or back. It's a roll-y stool at this point.

Who is Amane Set?

Official Art from Bank

Friday, October 29, 2021

Forgotten Friday #149 - 八重華&辰巳 / Yaeka and Tatsumi

 I did end up taking Christmas off. I watched some TV and was in general very cold. I miss having central heat and air.


Forgotten Friday #149 - 八重華&辰巳 / Yaeka and Tatsumi


This is the second time in this Google Docs word document that people completely missed the point of Yokune Ruko. 

Ruko has male and female banks. Both are still fundamentally Ruko. But Tatsumi and Yaeka share the same bank, only Tatsumi is g+20. Ruko is one character who can be drawn differently depending on which bank is used. This UTAU and Shallwill (I stan Will) miss the point and just make entire characters for the genderbend. Genderbends are supposed to be like, bends of the original character, not someone else entirely!

You can pull this and get it right, though. It’s harder for bodies that have been feminized with estrogen, but anyone can attempt to mimic the voice of the opposite gender. If you do poorly, there are formant filters in ReaPitch that will make it sound more like the gender you want it to be. Make two banks - they can still be packaged together as a unit! Heck, you can just run a formant shifter on the original samples band save it as a new bank. Twice the storage space, but it’s still a different library! (It’s as simple as setting the track default in reaper to that formant shifter, dragging in all the samples, and then exporting as stems.)

But two entirely separate characters for a flag setting? Naw, man. I do my best to be really positive and to say “you do you!” but like, please don’t make a virtually unrelated character the result of adding flags. (Traditional genderbends like Kasane Ted and Hatsune Mikuo are totally fine being nothing more than a flag. I have no issue with that at all!)

Who are Yaeka and Tatsumi?

Official Art from Bank


Wednesday, October 27, 2021

Wiki Wednesday #138 - 獏音サク / Sack Bugne

Where ever did the name Sack Bugne come from? ばくね is the reading given on his distribution page, and I don't get it.

Wiki Wednesday #138 - usa-utau's 獏音サク / Sack Bugne


In the last Usa UTAU article, we learned of Yata. She was a story of the destruction of humanity. Every major event in her life outside of Eve nursing her to health caused her to lose more of what made her something resembling a human.

Now, we have Sack. That is the official romanization of his name. He has no backstory. He seems to not even have a personality beyond the standard like, dislike, and hobby. Anyway.

Oh. I finally got where Sack came from, though. Peacock. 孔雀 means peafowl, and the second kanji has a reading of Saku. Okay.

Who is Sack Bugne?


Official Art from Bank

Friday, October 22, 2021

Forgotten Friday #148 - CODE:@ / Code At Mark

 The last article was so frustrating, I thought, write another. Get that taste of sadness out of your mouth!


Forgotten Friday #148 - CODE:@ / Code At Mark


His name is Koodo Atto Maaku. Or, Code At Mark. I kind of thought his name was cool until I read the full version. Why is that last part there? I don’t like it. 

And worst of all? He bears no resemblance to an animal for me to ramble about. 

Who is CODE: @?


Official Art from Site


Wednesday, October 20, 2021

Wiki Wednesday #137 - 馳音ヤタ / Yata Hasene

 This is my sixth article tonight! So cool! I think it took about three hours to get to this point. I think I only need six more to be in 2022! I definitely have that many drafts lined up, so yay! I'm excited!


Wiki Wednesday #137 - usa-utau's 馳音ヤタ / Yata Hasene


This one is a doozy! It's an usa utau, of course, but it's one of the ones that has a full backstory. Japanese tends to just leave out pronouns, and translate webpage is always worse than Google translating sentence by sentence. Translate webpage will just sprinkle in pronouns for the fun of it, even if they make no sense. 

I'm going to editorialize and recount the story with some details changed just based on the inferior translation. As a big note, according to what I read, there are major grammatical errors in some of the biographies that will screw up translation. (The error was leaving out "ni" after a "zu form" verb, which is supposedly incorrect in all cases, though I was going off of English language resources and not Japanese resources themselves.)

Mind you, I know how to write English well and I know all the rules. I will make grammatical errors all the time to emphasize a friendly tone. After I figured out what "zu form" was, I understood fully what they meant. It could have been a typo, or it could have been informal. (The biographies aren't proofread well - at one point they use VOALOID.) I don't have the vocabulary to ask whoever wrote it what the deal was. 

All of that is just to say, I know they will sometimes do things to make automatic translations wonky. That's why I cannot guarantee that my retelling is correct.

Who is Hasene Yata?


Official Art from Bank

Friday, October 15, 2021

Forgotten Friday #147 - teiravani's -OGATA-

 This will be my tenth article today! Wow! And then there will only be about 12 left before I reach my goal if I am good at counting. If I kept this pace tomorrow, I would reach the goal! If I could only do six a day, I would also reach my goal! I am hopeful.


Forgotten Friday #147 - teiravani's -OGATA-


I’ve got a question for you, Teiravani. Do you think I resemble a juvenile specimen of Felis catus? Do I look like a young member of the family Felidae?


No?


Then why are you kitten me?!

Who is Ogata?


Official art from site