But what about an Anime Character designed for a Digital Audio Workstation? This isn't something kids would use, not to mention Anime is hardly related to music production. I know that when I think of music production, my imagination generates 18-30 year old boys and men running cranking tunes out of a basement, bedroom, or garage. They might hook up with a record label someday, they might not. But I doubt they're very interested in Anime drawings...
Unless her costume is designed to look like the program's interface...
FL Studio (formerly Fruityloops) is a popular D.A.W. (Digital Audio Workstation) marketed by Image-Line. Currently at version 9, the program comes with a number of VSTs, Samples, and Tools for creating music of all categories and genres. It's fairly easy to use, and doesn't have a steep learning curve.
Meet FL Chan...
*Image Borrowed from FL Studio/Image-Line Site*
She was designed and rendered by Uruido, a Japanese FL user. Image-Line's response was to officially 'adopt' her as the FL Studio mascot. Her artwork now ships with each copy of FL Studio, and can be loaded as a background image within the program.
*Screenshot of my own FL Studio workspace*
She was also used in the Fruity Dance plugin. It's not particularly useful, but it does render an adorable chibi that 'dances' in sync with any music that's playing. The faster the music, the faster she dances. It's that intelligent. Also, users get to choose between 5 or 6 actions, including Hula, Breakdancing, and a wave that resembles the Caramelldansen.
The program already had a large fanbase, and with the introduction of FL Chan, fanart began to pop up all over the internet. Representatives created a thread on their official forum for the purpose of documenting each unique FL Chan sighting, including artwork, animations, 3D models, videos, and of course music.
So you might say that Viral Media has helped them gain a reputation. Also, FL Studio became a popular choice for creating musical accompaniment to Vocaloid Songs. Vocaloid is a synthesizer program that takes pre-recorded audio samples of a human voice, and strings them together to create realistic singing. Users only need type in the lyrics of their song, and choose a pitch for each note/syllable.
The Japanese version of Vocaloid also uses Anime mascot characters. For each voice 'bank' that's sampled, a new avatar is created. However, the software didn't gain much recognition until the debut of Vocaloid 2, with the 'Hatsune Miku' bank. Again, Viral media. The mascots grabbed so much attention that other Vocaloid merchandise was created.
But here's the difference between North American and Japanese merchandise... We make Mugs and T-Shirts. They make Toys and Video Games. You can actually buy plush versions of most Vocaloid Avatars (I have two myself), or collectible figurines, and keychains. They usually pop up at annual anime conventions (Anime North in particular, held every May), ranging in price from 2 to 50 dollars.
Now that I've gone off-topic, I'll bet you're wondering what ever happened to Uruido... Well, he went on to design several other mascots. They're not all official yet, but it's definitely a possibility. Image-Line also picked up his 'Harmless Chan' as a mascot character for it's VST, 'Harmless'.
*As seen on Youtube, Harmless Chan with Harmless VST*
Here, it's easier to see Uruido's goal. He designs costumes for each character that contain design elements also used in the VST interface. At very least colors, but he's gone so far as to include knobs, sliders and keyboards (See FL Chan's skirt) before... An excellent example would be Sytrus Chan.
More of his designs (Ogun Chan, Slice-X Chan, Parametric EQ, Candy Chan, and Deckadance Chan) are on display here.
No comments:
Post a Comment