【Illustrator】しうか (shiuka)

Image used in the video for PutinP's きみに、わたしに。(Kimi ni, watashi ni./To you, To me.). Features Hatsune Miku.

しうか (shiuka) is an illustrator best known for his(?) illustrations for various Vocaloid songs on niconico. His most significant contributions are for doing the artwork and videos to most of プーチンP (PutinP)’s songs, most notably for きえないひとみ。(Kienai Hitomi./Unvanishing Eyes.), and also for this piece of artwork done for mothy’s 悪ノ召使 (Aku no Meshitsukai/Servant of Evil) video. His works are mostly Vocaloid-centered, and especially heavily feature Kagamine Rin and Len. shiuka likes a strong and tough Len (“Ikeren”) the most, and just adores Rin in general. He also uses a computer (without an LCD monitor) running Windows XP, draws with a Wacom Intuos 3, and uses SAI for drawing and Adobe Photoshop 7.0 for further image editing. His blood type is A.

shiuka generally has two different styles. The first one is quite anime-like, with huge eyes, bright, pastel colours, sharp and minimal shading, and undetailed hair. They also usually feature light-hearted content. This style is most prevalent in his older illustrations. As for his second style, it looks very solemn and serious, with almost no smiling characters, muted, cold, and dark colour themes, and quite a few usages of grungy textures in the background. In this style, shiuka also draws strands of hair, uses illuminating highlights, and sometimes even details actual noses and lips. He also sometimes has a mix between his two styles to a very aesthetic effect.

Image used in the video for PutinP's ねむりたいのに！(Nemuritai no ni!/Even though I want to sleep!). Features Kagamine Rin.

Of course, being a collaborator with PutinP certainly means that nothing is ever what it seems, and the best examples of shiuka’s serious style have been from gravely hilarious and near-classic (Please click on this) pieces of art. He also designed the now relatively-well-known Russian Rin (Nicknamed プーリン/Purin as a joke to プーチン/Putin) who is always the subject of PutinP’s videos. He also designed Russian(?) Luka and Miku McDonald, both of which are used in PutinP’s songs as well.

In addition to illustration, shiuka has also helped out some niconico producers with putting together videos and has even uploaded a 51 second song (niconico link only) where he personally tuned an UTAU Vocaloid, 欲音ルコ (Kokune Ruko) to skillfully sing Silent Night in English.

In conclusion, shiuka is a very good artist (with other talents!) who is only getting better and better, as can be seen from his older to newer works, but has already established his own slick and definable style. I personally just can’t get enough of his serious style.

Website: http://agatek.web.fc2.com/
Blog: http://agatek.blog27.fc2.com/
Pixiv: http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=92560
Piapro: http://piapro.jp/agatek
Mylist: http://www.nicovideo.jp/mylist/5959414
Twitter: http://twitter.com/shiuka

【Vocaloid Composer】buzzG

From the PV for AGAINST. Click to enlarge. (Image: meola)

buzzG is a Vocaloid composer who is pretty new to the scene, with his first niconico submission being from July 31, 2009. His best known works are AGAINST, Flashback, 赤い雨 (Akai Ame/Red Rain) and name of memory. His most popular work so far is AGAINST, a GUMI song with a PV done by artist meola, with 2,900+ Mylists. buzzG resides in Tokyo, Japan, and made his first song within only one month of learning how to use midi and Vocaloid.

buzzG composes mostly rock songs and occasionally ballads, and as a result his songs always have an electric guitar and bass playing significant parts. All his songs sound high quality since there’s a quite a lot of depth with all the intruments playing different parts at once, but is well arranged in that it doesn’t sound messy. The flow of his songs are usually relatively predictable, but don’t sound boring as there are enough twists, and the main melody isn’t repeated over and over. buzzG’s Vocaloid tuning is quite impeccable in that even his first work with Vocaloid is easy to listen to and don’t sound rigid and robotic. In AGAINST, his latest song, GUMI’s vocal tuning sounds so natural and well-done that a lot of commenters on niconico say that it sounds nearly human.

All in all, buzzG composes some consistently well-done songs with very good vocal tuning. Looking forward to hearing more works from him!

Essential Works:
1. AGAINST (niconico link)
2. LAST YEAR (niconico link) **First Work**
3. name of memory (niconico link)

Blog: http://buzzg.blog84.fc2.com/
Mylist: http://www.nicovideo.jp/mylist/13954828
Piapro: http://piapro.jp/buzzg
Twitter: http://twitter.com/buzz_g

【Singer】梅宮雛 (UMEMIYA Hina)

梅宮雛 (UMEMIYA Hina) is a relatively well-known niconico singer best known for her rendition of wowaka’s 裏表ラバーズ (Uraomote Lovers/Love & Lovers). Her titles always start with “人知れず”, which means “secretly”. (So the whole template title translates to something like “Tried to Sing in secret / Umemiya Hina”). As well, she gets other people on niconico to help her with mixing her songs. Also, Umemiya Hina is most likely not her real name.

Umemiya is capable of hitting extremely high notes without straining, wavering or straying from the note, and can sing in many different voices, though the usual one she uses is slightly cutesy but not at all annoying. Some of her “other voices” sound like Kagamine Len and even INOUE Marina. (See her rendition of Nanairo no NicoNico Douga). She also seems to have really good breath control since she can not only switch between voices quickly, but she can also keep singing a lot without gasping for breath (See her rendition of Uramote).

Essential Works:
1. 裏表ラバーズ (Uraomote Lovers/Love & Lovers) (niconico link) **Most Popular Work**
2. 炉心融解 (Roshin Yuukai/Meltdown) (niconico link)
3. いつもより泣き虫な空 (Itsumo Yori Nakimushi na Sora/A Sky Who’s Being More of a Crybaby Than Usual) (niconico link) **Recommended**

Niconico Profile: http://www.nicovideo.jp/user/10862349
Mylist: http://www.nicovideo.jp/mylist/10657771

【Singer】UmiNeko

I don’t usually listen to male singers for unknown reasons, but this person is far too great.

UmiNeko is an amateur singer from niconico who is becoming more well-known recently for his unique voice and consistently high quality works. His most popular works are his renditions of DixieFlatline’s Just Be Friends, with 1906 Mylists, and におP’s (nioP) 蜜蜂 (Mitsubachi/Honeybee) with 1536 Mylists. He almost always provides MP3 downloads of his songs, and the majority of his songs are mixed by madamxx and encoded by various people. In addition to singing, he also has a radio show hosted on niconico live stream sometimes.

UmiNeko’s voice is, to put it in one word, soulful. It is mature, emotional, and has weight as he retains all his notes completely and fully, which makes him extremely suitable for songs of the Soul genre. Despite having a pretty specialized voice, he sings many songs from different genres, including Jazz, R&B, and Pop, to name a few. UmiNeko usually sings in a relatively low voice, but he has absolutely no trouble transitioning to really high notes quickly and smoothly. He also likes to do a lot of really well-done scat singing. Lastly, UmiNeko also songs quite a bit of English songs (which I think he is best suited for), and his English pronounciation is quite good.

Please give his songs a listen! His voice might take a bit of getting used to at first, but it is absolutely incredible from his first songs to the most recent ones. I had a hard time picking only 6 songs to list here.

Essential Works – Vocaloid Covers:
1. 蜜蜂 (Mitsubachi/Honeybee) (niconico link) **Representative Work & Highly Recommended**
2. 少年銀河 (Shounen Ginga/Boy Galaxy) (niconico link) →Recommended
3. つよがり (Tsuyogari/Bluff) (niconico link) →First work

Essential Works – Original/English:
1. Losing game (niconico link) (Original song; Collaboration with におP (nioP)
2. You Give Me Something (niconico link) (English song; James Morrison) →Recommended
3. What’s Going On (niconico link) (English song; Marvin Gaye)

Mylist: http://www.nicovideo.jp/mylist/9247970
niconico Community: http://ch.nicovideo.jp/community/co71841
Youtube Playlist: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=7EA54D231EF07449

Things I Am Excited About 【Fall 2009 M3(24)】

M3 is a one-day, biannual, music-only convention held in Yokohama, Japan, and its name stands for “Music + Media-Mix Market”. It’s kind of like Tokyo’s Comiket but for doujin music artists only. The Fall M3 event for 2009 will be held on October 11th, and is the 24th iteration of the event. This post will briefly highlight only the circle releases I am watching for (22 releases in total are profiled here). Click on the banners for a link to the site, all of which include demos unless otherwise stated. Info is listed BELOW the banner.

Entries are loosely ordered by genre:
1. Original, xx-based (ie. Story-based, Light Novel-based, etc)
2. Original, Pop / Original, Pop-rock
3. Original
4. Touhou Arrange
5. Cover
★★ entries are the ones I am most excited about.

Copy and paste the stars or genre titles into CTRL+F to find them.

I know the doujin music scene is a pretty uncommon/obscure subject in most anime-related blogs, but if you have an interest in finding out more and discovering new artists and such, M3 is seriously the best place to start foraying into this niche-ish sector. Hopefully this post will be helpful for doing that too.

Official M3 Circle List: http://www.m3net.jp/m3_24/circles.html
M3 Circle Releases List at BLACK ANGEL: http://blackangel.main.jp/event.php

【Vocaloid Composer】DATEKEN

Artwork drawn specially for Tsumugi Uta. Click to enlarge.(Illust: ホルダー@Piapro)

DATEKEN is a relatively well-known Vocaloid composer who submitted his first song onto niconico in October 2008, and prior to that he had experience in composing instrumental songs since 2005, which he uploaded onto his muzie account. DATEKEN’s most well-known song is 紡唄 -つむぎうた- (Tsumugi Uta/Spinning Song), which currently has over 11,000+ mylists and 190,000+ views. DATEKEN is actually a graduate student from Hokkaido and his hobbies include playing the piano, doing karate, and reciting poems.

DATEKEN uses only Kagamine Rin and Len to sing his songs, and at this point has not used any of the other Vocaloids yet. Each of his Vocaloid songs have a different genre assigned to them, ranging from ethnic (Jutenija), technopop (Ur-Style), R&B (イマジネイション/Imagination), and even waltz (schwarz waltz), which really show his high level of versatility as a composer. However, most of his songs generally belong to the electronic music genre, such as techno, trance, 2-step, and house. All his songs are extremely high quality, and give a really good representation of their respective genres. Song themes are really varied, which makes all of them impressionable and easy to remember, and the large majority of songs are quite catchy. His vocal tuning for the Kagamine twins are also impeccable, and in my opinion ranks among the best as they are consistently natural and easy to listen to. (Definitely not a small feat considering that Kagamine Rin and Len are among the harder Vocaloids to tune.) He also changes their voices according to the song, and as a result they always sound fitting and different. As a one-man composer, DATEKEN does everything himself: writes and arranges the song, writes the lyrics, and makes his own videos, which are usually well-subtitled and with a nice static layout and picture, the latter of which he borrows from royalty-free artists on Piapro.

In addition to composing Vocaloid songs, he has also composed intrumental tracks also to the theme of widely varying genres, and has also released a Touhou arrange doujin album called 当方暇軍団 under the circle name of 暇軍団. He creates songs with a keyboard controller for the most part.

All in all, super-good and incredibly composer. Please listen to all his songs! I especially recommend his works if you want to explore different musical genres.

Essential Works:
1. 紡唄 -つむぎうた- + ENG Subs (Tsumugi Uta/Spinning Song) (niconico link)
2. Never! + ENG Subs (niconico link) **Especially Recommended**
3. なまえのないうた (Namae no Nai Uta/A Song without a Name) (niconico link)

Website: http://www14.plala.or.jp/dateken/
Mylist: http://www.nicovideo.jp/mylist/10109173
Piapro: http://piapro.jp/dateken
Twitter: http://twitter.com/dateken
muzie: http://www.muzie.co.jp/artist/a014791/
Blog: http://blog.livedoor.jp/vit_dat/
Youtube Playlist: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=896975BF8D8151E4&search_query=dateken
DATE tunes (digital album) page: http://piapro.jp/karent/?view=album&id=43

【Illustrator】nayu

This picture speaks for itself. Click to enlarge.

nayu is an amateur illustrator who is quite famous on Pixiv for her hilarious and high quality illustrations. Her artwork is mostly of Vocaloid, and the character she draws (and likes) the most is KAITO. nayu’s chair is white, her computer is black, and she has a dog.

nayu’s illustration style is for the most part in the anime-style, with lots of exaggerated expressions and poses, as well as a colouring style kind of reminiscent of modern visual novels, but she draws almost all of her characters with small, slightly almond-shaped eyes and realistic body proportions ←(Warning: Half-naked men). Her works also have an insanely high level of completion, with superclean lines, accurate shading, organized compositions, and a really good eye for matching up a lot of different colours. nayu usually uses pastel colours with nearly no black lines, and same-colour-but-darker colours for shading. The overwhelming majority of her work are Vocaloid-themed, and it is apparent that her favourite out of all of them is KAITO, as she seems to like making (good) fun of him the most. What sets nayu’s Vocaloid art apart from the rest is that her pictures are either extremely silly and hilarious, with unfathomable poses and themes, or really pretty and cool. It also helps that nayu is really good at drawing different facial expressions, and all of them are expressed very well and really brings the characters to life. Besides drawing Vocaloid characters, she also has an original, unnamed character who she likes to draw. Also worth mentioning is that nayu does not seem to know what the definition of a “doodle” is at all.

Pixiv: http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=268443
Blog: http://pixiv.cc/nayu3/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/nayu03
Piapro: http://piapro.jp/nayu3

【Singer】奈緒 (Nao)

奈緒 (Nao) is an amateur female singer on niconico. She is not very well-known, and her best-received work was a cover of 古川P (FurukawaP)’s ピアノ・レッスン (Piano Lesson), at 5,200+ views and 267 Mylists. She is able to sing in both Japanese and English, and has also uploaded videos of herself playing pretty difficult songs on the piano.

Nao’s voice is extremely versatile, and changes her voice according to the requirements of the song. Examples of her versatility include singing in a slightly cute voice with enough maturity to not change the mood of a song, singing all of a choir’s parts by herself, imitating both Kagamine Len’s and Kagamine Rin’s voices almost to perfection with Vocaloid-like articulation, and singing in a mature, deeper voice suitable for jazz, amongst many others. Nao is great at hitting all the notes with no glaring mistakes, although that may be due to (slight) editing and auto-tuning that she does herself. A slightly more definable trait in her songs is that she sings with a bit of legato in everything. As well, she is very good setting up a gentle, relaxing, and easy-to-listen mood in all her songs. Although Nao sings with slightly accented English, I find that her pronounciation is extremely good and is very unlike the usual “Japanese English”. Even her short English comments on her videos have completely correct grammar.

Essential Works:
1. ピアノ・レッスン (Piano Lesson) (niconico link) **Highly Recommended for use as background music**
2. Hail Holy Queen (niconico link) *Solo Choir*
3. 雨を連れゆく (niconico link) *Kagamine Len Imitation*

Mylist: http://www.nicovideo.jp/mylist/5565901