Happy Birthday, Sonika and Tonio!

You guys know what today is, right? No? Really? Well then let me educate you! Today celebrates two Engloid’s birthdays: Sonika’s second anniversary and the first anniversary of Tonio. Read on to help celebrate!

First let’s discuss Sonika and what she has been up to in the past two years.

Sonika was Zero-G’s fifth Vocaloid and the third English voicebank released under the Vocaloid2 engine in 2009. Zero-G tried a different approach regarding her release and made a Twitter account for her. This account helped integrate her into the fan community, where she held discussions with fans and even discussed news about other Vocaloids (“Yes! I’m getting more Vocaloid brothers and sisters. I can’t wait, I want to sing with them now!!!”). Her Twitter reached over 1,000 followers in January.

She also had a Chinese version released on August 1, 2010 in Taiwan; though there was no Chinese voicebank, an instructional DVD and a comparative table of English and Chinese phonemes were included that showed how she could produce 90% of the Chinese pronunciations. The boxart also showed Sonika in a different outfit.

A contest was held in November 2009 to give Sonika a “new look.” Many people were confused when new artwork by Mario Wibisono was uploaded to the Crypton Catalog and Zero-G’s site, thinking that the winning image had be chosen early. However, that artwork was commissioned for new boxart and the contest rules never stated that the winning artwork would be used as the boxart (it was just for the website). The contest winner was Katherine Junginger and her winning illustration can be viewed here.

A second contest was held, this time for music. The winner was Daniel Castro and their winning song, “U Know It (My Name Is Sonika)”, can be downloaded here.

Sonika is only one of the few Vocaloids to be given a personality by a company, via her Twitter and comic strips. The fan reaction to this, and other situations, have been mixed. At the moment there are no plans by Zero-G to update her voicebank.

Now we get to talk about Tonio! He was Zero-G’s sixth Vocaloid and has a professional male classical voice. Tonio also will see a future Tawianise release by E-Capsule, complete with a new design. An interesting side note is that Tonio’s software offers the most up-to-date version of Vocaloid2 for English Vocaloids.

Sadly Tonio, despite having a high quality voicebank, has not received much attention in the Vocaloid community.

Next let’s watch some videos featuring these two Engloids.

And now for some illustrations~!

We’d like to thank you for celebrating with us these two Engloids’ birthdays. Engloids need love too, don’t you know? Let’s hope for more news and interest in the next year!