Tired of listening to robotic-like vocaloid voices?

CeVIO, a currently unknown company in the vocaloid community, has finally released their first speech synthesizer software: CeVIO Creative Studio FREE.

In it we find a very cute bishoujo named Satou Sasara, who can talk and, soon, also sing. Compared to most other vocaloids, Sasara has a very refreshing and human-like voice which is almost indiscernible from a normal voice.

Her program is very easy to use and is, for the time being, free to download. She’s the first of three characters to be released so hopefully we’ll be able to see more updates in the future.

Here’s a short demo on how to use her:

(Note: I’m currently having problems with typing hiragana when using her on both of my laptops so there might be some sort of glitch for computers with English as the main language. I’m going to contact CeVIO to see if they can fix it)

So what do you guys think about her? Is Sasara interesting enough, or will you stick with more popular vocaloids like Miku?

Japan’s most northern prefecture, Hokkaido, have joined forces with a Vocaloid company to create a mascot for Hokkaido. The mascot, drawn by no other than Hatsune Miku’s designer Kei, goes by the name “Kitano Kamui” and is an “Idol in Making”.

Kamui will be used to promote the prefecture’s culture such as food, nature, scenery, history and more.

Her background is as follows:
Name : Kitano Kamui
Height : 152cm
Interests : Playing around with smartphones, karaoke, visiting the hot springs, eat.
Favourite food : Ramen, Sweets, B-grade gourmet.
Favourite colour : Pink
Birthplace : Hokkaido

Kamui is an idol-in-training, and was supposed to debut soon. But misfortune befalls her agency and it was decided that the agency will go out of business in 6 months’ time, due to lack of finance and the CEO’s sudden sickness. Because of that they thought they could no longer help her debut. Kamui’s manager wanted to at least fulfill his boss’ dream, which was to have their idol stand on the stage of  Hokkaido Dome and perform in front of a full-seated crowd. Kamui then proclaimed that she will work hard to gather at least 30,000 fans around the web, find sponsors and make this dream happen. And that was the start of her challenge. (Source: VocaParty)

So here’s the catch: If we want her to become a Vocaloid, her Facebook page needs to hit 30,000 fans within half a year.

Does this sound interesting to you?

→Give Kamui’s Facebook page a visit!

1) Create a Piapro account. (This site is in Japanese but you should be able to make it with Google translate, if you have any problems write it in the comments and I’ll help you)

2) Come up with a Magical Girl Snow Miku Design. Miku must have a magical wand. This time around you can also design a cute pet for her. You can use this template for Miku if you want to.

3) Upload your drawing on Piapro under the tag “２０１４年雪ミク衣装”. If you want to upload a drawing of her new pet, add the tag ““２０１４年雪ミクペット”. You can also choose to only draw her pet if you don’t want to draw Miku. Note that both tags must be locked.

4) Good luck!(｡･ω･)ﾉﾞ

——-

The current entries for Miku is here and the pet is here.

The winner(s) will recieve a Snow Miku 2014 Nendoroid and several Miku goods. (The Miku and Pet competition are seperate)

The contest started April 24th and lasts until May 13th.

This took an hour just to sub! arghh ; A ;

There’s some kanjis and greek(?) text that I haven’t translated. Anyone know what they mean?

Also the last part “単脳”(“Single brain”) does not have an actual meaning in Japanese.