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 and she was sold under as a 'space lounge robo-vocalist sensation'.

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 (Alove, Sweet Ann Vs Kitto) to YouTube.

After Ann's appearance, Vocaloid fell mostly into obscurity in the west due to a change in the trends of the music industry, with the focus of the indie music being taken away from sites like My Space. This was the circle Vocaloid had mostly been aimed at in the west, although Vocaloid was not the only software to be affected by this change and music software in general was hit by the change of styles. Focus began to be put on a handful of software suites. Sweet Ann was the last of the English capable Vocaloids to receive great attention for a while and the last Vocaloid to be greatly noticed prior to Hatsune Miku's rise to fame. She and the Vocaloids before her became relatively unknown during the time period between Ann and Prima and even though Prima renewed the interest, she did not receive the same reaction as the Vocaloids before her.

Vocaloid 3 demo
Sweet Ann's vocal was used in the Vocaloid 3 demostration to demostrate the difference between a Vocaloid 2 voicebank that has been imported into vocaloid 3. Her only word sung was "My" in ascending keys across the octaves.

Marketing
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. She is loosely based on "The Bride of Frankenstein". Her stitches are often mistaken for a choker.

Like Vocaloids before her, she was aimed at professional musicains as there was no established Vocaloid fandom.

Soundation Release
Amongst the releases for Soundations loops and sounds for Christmas 2010 was also included some samples of Sweet Ann and Big Al, a contest was also included with a chance to win both Vocaloids.

2011 Taiwanese design
On 01/04/2011 PowerFX's website went down. When it reopened on April 6, 2011, both Sweet Ann and Big Al were sporting a new look.

April 8, 2011 A PowerFX employee noted that the designs seen on the PowerFX website of both Big Al and Sweet Ann were that of a Taiwanese distributor of PowerFx products and were not the official designs of Big Al or Sweet Ann.

According to PowerFX, they put the Taiwan boxart on their website to try the oblong shape as they preferred it and were thinking about switching to this shape for their Vocaloid products. The boxarts placement was temporary until they could run a Sweet Ann/Big Al competition, however they noted the fandom had insisted that boxart be on the page and had to switched back.

Later demo songs "Carry on", "U belong to me" and Shu-tP's classic song "Night of the Magic" were released by E-Capsule. Later Sweet Ann and Big Al were featured in the song "at your side 2010". Other songs include "Everlasting Love".

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. However, she lacks the raspiness of Lola and is therefore better suited to some genres like pop, rather than styles such as R&B. She also has a distinct accent that can give Ann a "sassy" ring to her voice.

She lacks the breathing phonetic. As the rolling "R" phoneme wasn't introduced until Prima, she is the sole English only Vocaloid 2 without it included in her capabilities upon her release. She is considered the most dated of the Vocaloid 2 based Vocaloids; Big Al has more recorded keys then she does resulting in her voice being less smooth then her counterpart. Her accent can make her pronunciations of some words sound odd and swapping phonetics may have to occur to get around the accent, but those able to work with it report she is relatively easy to use.

Sweet Ann may occasionally have an installation error when installed, this is related to her engine version and may show up when installing her over a more updated Vocaloid 2 like Big Al and Sonika. Help can be found within the fandom on fixing this. This can be fixed very easily, however, if a newer Vocaloid installed after her installation, otherwise re-installation in release order is another solution.

Allowance is also given by PowerFX for the addition of the Vocaloid's works onto Karen-T.

Currently there are no plans for an updated version of Sweet Ann. However, it has been confirmed that if there is demand, Sweet Ann will be updated to a newer engine version. Confirmation was also given from Anders, that if English Vocaloids become a lot more popular, Appends for existing Vocaloids are also a possibility.

Reception
At the time of release, Ann received positive reviews with many praising her "sweet" voice. Reviewers noted that on occasion she sounded realistic enough to not notice she was a virtual singer which was also pleasing to reviewers. Another positive sign was that reviewers had praised the improvements between Vocaloid and Vocaloid 2. This resulted in Ann receiving a good reception upon her release.

The overall reaction to her boxart, however has over the course of her existence been mixed. The more negative reactions came about based on the contrast between her boxart and the Vocaloids of Japan. On top of this was the additional lack of knowing the artistic direction of PowerFX's Vocaloids and additionally being unable to connect to the style used on the boxart further complicated the view of Ann to Japanese users. Prior to both Ann's release in Japan and the Vocaloids becoming famous, there was virtually no criticism towards her boxart and early Vocaloid 2 users did not make such comments about it. Either based on the reaction of Japan, or the contrast of the boxart styles to Japan, later western fans who were attracted to Vocaloids because of their growing popularity also reacted negatively towards the boxart.

Her boxart is styled on early-mid 20th century posters, which has led to many users to about her being demonic and the background colouring as fire meant she was "in hell". However, Big Al's boxart had the same background but in blue and the portrayal was meant to be interpreted differently to how they were eventually perceived 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 a number of 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. Ann has also continued to be interpreted very differently, some see her boxart as "nightmare fuel" and base their version of Ann on this, while others prefer to make more moe versions of her.

For years it was the line around her neck that caused the biggest stir among the vocaloid fans due to it actually being metallic staples (referred to as stitches), a feature that is also included on Big Al's forehead. However, since few realized that PowerFX were basing their Vocaloids on cult classic monsters at the time, it was often mistaken for a choker. 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. It is the stitching that continues to be a fan favorite when it comes to Ann's design, becoming an iconic association with her.

In late 2009, prior to the release of Big Al, she was regarded as the second most popular English Vocaloid, first being Prima.

Even though Big Al's Taiwan redesign was considered an outrage amongst Engloid and Big Al fans, quite a number actually like Ann's Taiwan design.

In the Nico Nico Douga International Vocaloid ranking 2010, Ann was the 4th most common Vocaloid in the top 30 rankings, appearing in 3 songs.

Trivia

 * 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, along with Leon.


 * Her Japanese nicknames 甘音アン (Amane Ann) means "Sweet Sound Ann", and 甘いアン (Amai Ann) is a play on words. "Amai Ann/An" is the word-to-word translation from English and can be read as "sweet bean paste," a common cuisine in Japan.


 * 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.


 * According to PowerFX, their Vocaloids are more like Cyborgs than Androids.


 * Sweet Ann has been described as a "white Lena Horne" by PowerFX.


 * Sweet Ann's Taiwan design is based on a bride possibly from the fact she was based on Bride of Frankenstein. The orginal artwork is found here.
 * Sweet Ann can be heard singing the words "Helvetica Standard" in the anime, "My Ordinary Life", as well as background music.

Notable for...

 * First Vocaloid 2 ever released
 * First female voicebank for Vocaloid 2
 * First English Vocaloid released for Vocaloid 2
 * First PowerFX Vocaloid ever released
 * First female PowerFX Vocaloid
 * First English Vocaloid to have an "avatar"