ZOLA PROJECT

ZOLA PROJECT consists of three male Japanese VOCALOIDs released in June 2013 for the VOCALOID3 engine, marking the 10th anniversary of the VOCALOID software. YUU, KYO, and WIL were developed and are distributed by the YAMAHA Corporation.

Etymology
"ZOLA" is an acronym for "Zenithal Operated Liaison Aggregation".


 * YUU Blood type B; Gemini; age in adolescence; sweet voice.
 * KYO Blood type B; Aquarius; fair, strong voice.
 * WIL Blood type A; Capricorn; exotic, husky voice.

Appearance
Yuki Seto confirmed that hiring Yoshitaka Amano (character designer for the Final Fantasy series), for "image illustrations," was part of an effort to expand the VOCALOID™ fanbase beyond the current segment of listeners. This was to create a new image for the software. Yuki Seto has stressed that Amano's artwork of the three vocalists are "image illustrations" and not "character designs." In other words, the artwork is like concept art, conveying a specific image instead of a specific character design. For the logo design, it is credited to Souun Takeda.

Though Amano's designs remained the primary focus of advertisement and identity of the ZOLA product, additional designs were also produced with the intent of being additional, yet official, boxart designs. One of the reasons for this was to highlight different interpretations of the original Amano artwork, while giving YUU, KYO, and WIL, additional promotional art as well as alternative designs.

Marketing
ZOLA PROJECT was heavily advertised prior to release; a number of interviews and spotlight events were hosted as part of this. YUU, KYO, and WIL later appeared on the cover of DTM magazine.

ZOLA Launch Contest
To celebrate the launch of VOCALOIDs, a song & art contest was released on ZOLA's official website.

The winners songs and illustrations from category "Amuse Award" was features on ZOLA's first compilation, released on January 29, 2014.

ZOLA First Anniversary Contest
A new song & art contest was released on July 27, 2014 in collaboration with Victor Entertainment to celebrate the first anniversary of launch.

Social Media
ZOLA PROJECT has an official Twitter account.

Trivia

 * KYO's original star-sign was given as "Leo" and YUU's as "Aquarius."
 * As well as being a 10th anniversary release, ZOLA's release marked a few other events for VOCALOID™ overall:
 * Being the 23rd product released for VOCALOID3, ZOLA was the product that oversaw VOCALOID3, beating the overall number of released packages for VOCALOID2 (it had reached 22 releases).
 * With the release of ZOLA, VOCALOID3 consisted of a total of 35 vocals released between its 23 packages, the same number of vocals released within the lifespan of the VOCALOID2 engine.
 * In addition, this was the first time a multi-bank release had contained vocals from more than one singer.
 * Was originally intended to be a limited edition package.