Sweet ANN

Sweet Ann is a Vocaloid released by PowerFX. She was the first vocaloid created using Yamaha’s Vocaloid2 upgraded software. Her name is a pun based on her origins, meaning that Sweet-Ann = Swe-den.

She is voiced by "an Australian singer whose artist name is 'Jody'".

History
PowerFX took steps when Sweet Ann was to be released. They advertised her by creating a MySpace page and uploaded demos to YouTube.

Soundation Release
Amongst the releases for Soundations loops and sounds was also included some samples of Sweet Ann and Big Al, a contest has also been included with a chance to win both Vocaloids.

Usage for Music
Her voice is an improvement over past female voices Lola and Miriam. As her name suggests, her voice is meant to sound "sweet" and she has a variety of uses within music. She is mostly used for pop music but is ideal for early-mid 20th century rock/country songs. She also has a distinct Australian accent within her voice that can give Ann a "sassy" ring to her voice. She lacks the breathing phonetic, users sometimes substitute other Vocaloids like Miku when they have to make Ann breath for a song. As the rolling "R" phoneme wasn't introduced until Prima, she is the only English capable Vocaloid 2 without it included in her capablities upon her release.

Prior to Sonika's release, Sweet Ann was the only Vocaloid 2 with single language capablities intended for the english speaking market that was capable of more general purposes and had an advantage over Prima for her more flexible design then Prima's stylistic vocals. When Luka Megurine was released, Sweet Ann became a frequent back up singer for Luka during songs where Luka sung in English.

Trivia

 * She is loosely based on "The Bride of Frankenstein". It should be noted most modern references of the character from the movie also contain the same stitches around her neck as Ann has. Her stitches are often mistaken for a choker.
 * Sweet Ann's boxart caused a new stir among the vocaloid fans due to her neck consisting of metallic staples, a feature that is also included on Big Al's forehead.
 * Her boxart is styled on early 20th century posters, which has led to many users to about her being demonic and the fire meant she was "in hell". However, Big Al's boxart had icebergs in the background and the portrayal was meant to be intrepretated differently to how they were eventually percieved by the Vocaloid fans.
 * Due to the shading of her boxart she is sometimes depicted as having very light blonde hair and tanned skin, to which some fans jokingly refer to her then as "Tan Ann" or "SweetTann". Despite all of this Nico Nico users jumped at the opportunity to buy Sweet Ann in order to make fun of her odd looking boxart. This produced a joke on Nico, in which Sweet Ann is made to shoot beams from her eyes.
 * She is the first English vocaloid to have a depiction as such on her boxart, although at this point the general idea of a true "avatar" would not be not considered until Miku's release a few months later.
 * After Big-Al's redesign by Ash, the artist asked for fan feedback about a possible redesign for Sweet Ann and a competition was mentioned by Bil Bryant from Power FX.
 * Sweet Ann has become so popular with the Japanese audience that there is an MMD model for her. after Sweet Ann's MMD model was created, people began to make other English Vocaloids into models, such as Big-Al, whose model was created by Nukude(on youtube), along with Leon.
 * Sweet Ann can be heard singing in the background of a few of the Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA Arcade songs, even though she is not a Crypton Future Media Vocaloid.