OLIVER

Oliver is an English Vocaloid developed by PowerFX and new VOCALOID company, VocaTone.

Oliver's voice provider was a 13 year old boy from Britain, who for legal reasons cannot be named. He is the first young boy Vocaloid not to use an adult voice and the first Vocaloid 3 English voicebank.

History
Oliver's production began 2 years before his release, his voice was recorded by a (then) 13 year old British boy. Oliver was originally announced on a blog as having a release date set for October 1st 2011. Vocaloid 3 was not set for release until October 21st. Certain members of the Vocaloid community were leaked details about him by PowerFX, including to editors of the Vocaloid wikia, such as that their next Vocaloid was male and a Vocaloid 3. Meanwhile, members of the community, had secretly been aiding Anders in Oliver's fine tuning. As it was their first Vocaloid, PowerFX agreed to release the product for VocaTone, with Anders sorting out most of the legal issues and aiding the group with any issues they faced.

Finally, a fan announced that information had passed to them of Oliver's name and Anders' confirmed that their information was correct. The voice was revealed at an anime convention, Anime Banzai, but it will not be released as an official demo. His first demo (More of a teaser really) will be put up on YouTube and NicoNicoDouga sometime in the near future.

On Halloween 2011, a song featuring Oliver, Sweet Ann and Big Al singing was released on YouTube, the song was a parody of the Addams Family theme song ("The PowerFX family"). Oliver's official demo song was released on YouTube and is a cover of Circus Monster originally sung by Megurine Luka. A second demo, Scarborough Fair, was also released alongside it. The third demo is "Dinky Dink"; composed by So-Pop and originally sung by Sonika, it focuses on his lower range and his English. His next demo, Going Home, focused more on his choir boy skills. Recently, his demo of Lonely Flight was reported by Vocatone as focusing on his lower octave. On December 20th, a Vocatone member reported that Oliver was to be released the next day and hinted that VocaloidOtaku forum members might get something "special". This later was revealed to be a 25% discount for VO members that will last till the end of January.

It has been confirmed that Oliver will have a physical box product as well as be available for download online. Progress-wise he is said to be complete. Voice and art were completely finished, and there are activities planned for his reveal and release. According to VocaTones they are pushing for a 2011 release but the holdup is Yamaha. On December 6th, PowerFX's website was updated to include a product page for Oliver.

Finally the announcement of his release came a day before it was due. For members of Vocaloid Otaku forums, a 25% discount is offered to the downloadable version (offer will extend to boxed version in the upcoming future) of Oliver for users who sign up to the forum. This e-mail will be sent out as a bulk e-mail. This offer ends on January the 31st 2012. Currently only the lite version can be bought from PowerFx. The Vocaloid 3 editor having to be bought from Yamaha themselves separately, although this will change in the future according to Anders.

A DVD release was eventually made for sale. On the 28th of Feb, 2012 a physical hard copy of Oliver and Vocaloid were released together.

Concept
Keeping within the "monster" theme of PowerFX vocaloids, Oliver is also a monster similar to Frankenstein's monster, like Big Al and Sweet Ann. According to Vocatone the reason he has bandages instead of stitches was because stitches did not suit him. The main inspirations for his outfit were the uniforms worn by the Vienna Boys Choir, and the type of clothing upper-class males wore in the late 18th and early 19th century.

According to Lawlietlk, the illustrator of Oliver, she was only told Oliver was a "classical" type of vocal originally. "James", Oliver's bird, was drawn from references; however, Oliver's design was done without any references.

Oliver's bird is an American Goldfinch.

Oliver's design was not influenced by Oliver Twist, in spite of the similarities, which are regarded as a coincidence. VocaTone did not realize the similarities until quite late in development.

He has a Dal Segno on his cloak.

Etymology
According to VocaTone, his name was originally "Cody". It is unknown why "Oliver" was chosen.

Marketing
Oliver was mostly discussed at Vocaloid Otaku forums where news and updates of his pre-release were being spoken about. The success of Vocaloid Otaku forums led to a discount being offered to those who signed up to the forum for up 3 months prior to his release. Vocaloid Otaku was already being used by PowerFX and Zero-G as their fanbase forum for gaining feed back from the English Voclaoid fans; however, the feedback and reaction was better received overall than even in the past with other Vocaloids, making this approach one of the companies' most successful marketing attempts on any Vocaloid.

The art was also drawn in a sketch style, giving a less refined illustration than previous Vocaloids.

Tumblr
Oliver has a Tumblr Oliver Fanclub.

Facebook
Oliver also has a Facebook page. A poll is currently being held for fans to vote on the type of merchandise they'd most like to see with Oliver.

Twitter
He has a Twitter account.

Taiwan Release
Oliver had a demo uploaded to youtube by Ecapsule called "Realm Beyond", though no official announcements have been made it is likely he is due for a Taiwan release.

Competition
A competition for Oliver is currently being run by VocaTone with the prize being Oliver himself. Details are found on the VocaTone website. MMD model have been supplied with the competition for use of entry as MMD is one of the methods for entering the competition with, though MMD is not required for entering the competition nor these specific models. Those taking part must create a PV to accommodate the song "Birds", competition expires on the 4th of December.

The winner was announced on the 28th of December 2012, the wining PV was porifra.

Vocaloid 3

 * Making Oliver clearer

Oliver was the first English capable Vocaloid to be released for Vocaloid 3 and the first English voicebank to feature the vocals of a child, with past English vocal providers being a mature or young adult age.


 * -|Oliver=

Examples of Usage
To our readers and editors, for section notes please read; Notes; Examples sections.

Popularity
Oliver was the best received English Vocaloid within the fandom. At one stage he had more fanart on Pixiv prior to release then some of the Japanese Vocaloids for Vocaloid 3 who had been known for some time prior to Oliver's announcement. His forum topic at Vocaloid Otaku reached 100 pages (sorted 20 posts per page), arriving at the number quicker then other topics about unreleased Vocaloids. Oliver's first two demos "Circus Monster" and "Scarborough Fair" also managed to get over 30,000+ views within their first month of upload, which was not seen by past English Vocaloids.

In April 2012, Oliver overtook Big Al's on English Vocaloid popularity. Oliver is currently the most popular Vocaloid designed to sing only in English in the Vocaloid fandom both in Japan and overseas.

In late August 2012, his PV demo song "Dinky Dink" became the first demo for a English only built Vocaloid to reach 100,000+ views.

Trivia

 * A choir styled Vocal had been planned since the very first Vocaloids went on sale in 2004, however, originally Zero-G were the ones who had intended to release such a voice.


 * Since Oliver was the first English Vocaloid developed since the Hatsune Miku Facebook account had been set up, a number of less informed fans have been known to classify him as "the first English Vocaloid". This is not the case and the very first Vocaloids Leon and Lola were English Vocaloids and were released in 2004. This is no fault of the fandom itself, but a long term issue that has been noted about some communities within the Vocaloid fandom that lack more experienced Vocaloid users.

Notable for...

 * First "young boy" Vocaloid actually voiced by a young boy
 * First English Vocaloid for Vocaloid 3
 * First male Vocaloid for Vocaloid 3
 * First PowerFX Vocaloid for Vocaloid 3
 * First VocaTone Vocaloid
 * First PowerFX Vocaloid with a Child's Voice

Gallery
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