Interview With Zero-G’s Dom Keefe (Vocaloid Production)

Earlier on Engloids’ Blog was able to carry out an interview with a staff from Zero-G as they talk about the development of Sonika, what plans they have for their older Vocaloids and a bit about Tonio as well. Read up on the interview right after the jump!

1) How did you and your company get involved with making Vocaloids?

We were approached by Yamaha. When they first decided to create Vocaloid they asked 3 or 4 companies to make voices for it and Crypton and ourselves were the only ones that actually went through the whole process to create end-products.

2) Would you mind telling me about the development of Vocaloid Sonika?

Prior to Sonika we’d really recorded quite serious professional artists. So for Sonika we decided to something quite frivolous. A young girl who could sing but was not a professional artist. We wanted her to have a freshness and innocence that you do’t get with a professional singer. We found someone who fitted the bill and recorded her over a number of months. Then it was the usual months of tedious programming before we ended up with finished product.

3) Anyone with with eyes can see that Zero-G has been getting more active with the Vocaloid fanbase. Please tell me your thoughts on what you think about the Vocaloid Fandom so far?

I think they are great. They are obviously passionate about their Vocaloid and I love people who have passion. They are very knowledgeable but also very critical. We’ve been stung a few times!! But it’s good that they don’t hold back – we need to learn where we’ve gone wrong as well as what we have done well so we can get better and improve our Vocaloid products.

4) Zero-G seems to be putting a lot of effort into promoting Sonika. Do you and your company plan on doing the same for the Vocaloids you have produced in the past?

We have started selling the old Vocaloids Lola, Leon and Miriam online at www.zero-g.co.uk and there may be some new artwork for them in the future!

5) How do you feel about the negative feedback that was received from the Vocaloid community about Sonika’s new look?

There’s been some positive feedback as well, but we can understand that the Vocaloid community hold all the Vocaloids dear to them and feel that they own them in some respect so we expected some negative feedback. When we saw the new image by Mario we were so overwhelmed by how beautiful it was that we felt it had to be the new box art for Sonika. Besides the old box-art was never that popular.

6) Do you plan on changing the box-art of any of your other Vocaloids?

As I said before, we may do for the old Vocaloids but not for Prima. She will always be who she is and Tonio (the new male classical singer to be released in February) will have similar box-art to Prima as he is a kind of partner product to Prima.

7) There have been several complaints about Sonika’s English in the community. As such, a lot of people have been asking for a Act. 2/upgrade version of Sonika’s voice bank. Does the company plan on updating Sonika’s voice bank anytime soon?

That would be very difficult to implement unfortunately. There is no way to update the voice bank without completely re-doing the whole database which would take months and would then be very difficult to distribute.

8) Vocaloid Miriam’s voice was given to her by famous singer Miriam Stockley. In the future, do you plan on using more British artists voices to help create Zero-G’s Vocaloids?

We’d really like to create a Vocaloid of someone very famous. We have some names in mind but we’ll have to wait and find out if they are interested in collaborating with us. We’ll let you know first if we can pursuade them.

9) Speaking about voice actors, do you mind giving us the names of the people who contribute their voices to help created the company’s earlier Vocaloids?

I’m sorry we are not allowed to contractually.

10) Do you have any Vocaloid news or plans in the future that you would like to discuss now?

As I mentioned before Vocaloid2 Tonio will be released in February. He is a male classical singer with a range from Baritone to Tenor. He has a lot of character and I think the Vocaloid community will be pleased with the clarity of his voice. But he’s not a typical Vocaloid voice – he’s a partner to Prima and he’ll be popular with Prima users who on the whole are more into classical music. After Tonio there will be another voice this year but we are still in discussions about who that will be. Also, we would love the Vocaloid community to give us their suggestions for voices they would like in the future, just email us at [email protected]

Thank you for taken the time to doing this interview. I’m pretty sure most of the people who view this blog really appreciate it.

That’s okay. Thanks for your interest in our work!

So it seems we can look forward to even more Vocaloid goodness from Zero-G after Tonio who will be released later this month, even though it’s still in the discussion phase for now. But still, for those who would like to give suggestions on the voices do remember to e-mail Zero-G to let yourself be heard.

Info source: Engloids’ Blog