How do you feel about characterizing an UTAU?
Official personalities, official backstories, official relationships, things of that sort?
Do you think this kind of information is necessary or unnecessary? How much detail should there be?
How do you think characterization affects using the voicebank itself?
Here's my opinion: Characterization is meant to inspire, not restrict.
I absolutely love detailed characterization. It is the very thing that attracted me to Hiyama Kiyoteru- the fact that he had official band members, with official personalities, and official backstories. If it weren't for that, I wouldn't have learned to appreciate his voice and music.
More on the UTAU side of things, characterization can make collaborations a lot more fun. Sure, you could merely use two voices as duet partners, but they could also have some sort of relationship- friendship, romance, enemies, whatever the situation calls for. With personalities and headcanons, you and the other UTAU's creator can imagine the way that these two characters would interact with each other.
And let's say you're wanting to write a song with a particular UTAU, but have no idea what kind of song you want to make. If that UTAU's character plays a particular instrument, it can inspire the type of music you write. If you have fun facts about the UTAU like "They are an intergalactic criminal on the run" then you'll definitely have fun thinking of lyrics that relate to that!
But this kind of official information by no means is meant to restrict whatever you choose to do in the end. If you want to cover a song that contradicts the official personality, then there's no harm in that. You could completely ignore it if you want, and simply use the UTAU for its voice. You don't even need to read whatever fun facts the creator decided to include. Official characterization is there for people who want it.
Honestly, voicebanks don't really stand out to me anymore. There's so many similar vocal types out there that I might as well choose whichever one is popular, or whichever ones my friends have made. There's nothing that attracts me to a new voicebank from a person that I don't know if all I have is a random Soundcloud post. So an interesting personality would be extremely compelling- I might want to know more about the character, I might be so interested that I want to write a character song. So please, UTAU creators, if you have headcanons or anything of the sort... Show them to the world!
This attitude against characterization is probably an attempt to appear more professional, and avoid the risk of bad writing or "Mary Sues". It's supposed to be about the MUSIC, after all. And surely we all hate the annoying "She loves Len but hates Miku and has magic powers" backstory. The thing is, the characterization section of this forum is now dead quiet. It makes me sad how afraid we are of having OCs. You aren't annoying for creating characterization in the first place. Nor are you detracting from some sort of mission to make vocalsynth more "mainstream" in music. Can't we just have fun?
Official personalities, official backstories, official relationships, things of that sort?
Do you think this kind of information is necessary or unnecessary? How much detail should there be?
How do you think characterization affects using the voicebank itself?
Here's my opinion: Characterization is meant to inspire, not restrict.
I absolutely love detailed characterization. It is the very thing that attracted me to Hiyama Kiyoteru- the fact that he had official band members, with official personalities, and official backstories. If it weren't for that, I wouldn't have learned to appreciate his voice and music.
More on the UTAU side of things, characterization can make collaborations a lot more fun. Sure, you could merely use two voices as duet partners, but they could also have some sort of relationship- friendship, romance, enemies, whatever the situation calls for. With personalities and headcanons, you and the other UTAU's creator can imagine the way that these two characters would interact with each other.
And let's say you're wanting to write a song with a particular UTAU, but have no idea what kind of song you want to make. If that UTAU's character plays a particular instrument, it can inspire the type of music you write. If you have fun facts about the UTAU like "They are an intergalactic criminal on the run" then you'll definitely have fun thinking of lyrics that relate to that!
But this kind of official information by no means is meant to restrict whatever you choose to do in the end. If you want to cover a song that contradicts the official personality, then there's no harm in that. You could completely ignore it if you want, and simply use the UTAU for its voice. You don't even need to read whatever fun facts the creator decided to include. Official characterization is there for people who want it.
Honestly, voicebanks don't really stand out to me anymore. There's so many similar vocal types out there that I might as well choose whichever one is popular, or whichever ones my friends have made. There's nothing that attracts me to a new voicebank from a person that I don't know if all I have is a random Soundcloud post. So an interesting personality would be extremely compelling- I might want to know more about the character, I might be so interested that I want to write a character song. So please, UTAU creators, if you have headcanons or anything of the sort... Show them to the world!
This attitude against characterization is probably an attempt to appear more professional, and avoid the risk of bad writing or "Mary Sues". It's supposed to be about the MUSIC, after all. And surely we all hate the annoying "She loves Len but hates Miku and has magic powers" backstory. The thing is, the characterization section of this forum is now dead quiet. It makes me sad how afraid we are of having OCs. You aren't annoying for creating characterization in the first place. Nor are you detracting from some sort of mission to make vocalsynth more "mainstream" in music. Can't we just have fun?