HETALOID: Chinaloid Box Art

I've been getting into Hetaloid recently. Listening to the songs and whatnot. It's really fun and all, but being an UTAU user, I listen and think, "Wouldn't it be great if I could do this?" But of course, Hetaloid is technically illegal (lemme rant on that in a sec), so everyone who makes a voicebank keeps it to themselves, rather than distributing it. So If you want a Hetaloid voicebank, you need to make it.

So I did.

My Chinaloid voicebank is near completion, though there are some sloppy syllables in the voicebank, it's to be expected when you can't get an ABSOLUTELY CLEAR shot at JUST the vocals. The BG music is almost ALWAYS gonna peep through, but for the most part, he's a clean voicebank. Of course, when I made the Voicebank, I just HAD to design a character and boxart to go with it. Yes, the Hetaloid China looks a LOT like the original, but I made SLIGHT adjustments; his hair is black, not brown, and his eyes are bright gold instead of that kinda honey color. After all, it's not meant to be CHINA; it's meant to be Chinaloid. I view the Hetaloids as similar, but not the same as their Hetalian counterparts. The Hetaloids take on a slightly different appearance, almost like strange reflections of the Hetalia characters.

So now my rant. It's supposed to be illegal to take someone's voice without their permission and edit it, right? That's what the voicebanks are, after all. If it is illegal for someone to take a recording of what someone else said and edit it, then you might as well throw every newscaster and politician in jail (most politicians ought to be there anyway, though). Newscasters edit out certain soundbites to twist a story their way, and politicians edit audio of their opponents (which they OBVIOUSLY didn't obtain permission from them to get) in order to turn their words against them. Mudslinging, anyone? So when someone says; "You can't use that person's voice without permission," I say, "watch some TV, you'll see what I mean." Now, if you're claiming that it's YOUR voice and not crediting the actual voice provider, I can see something wrong with that, but that's not what I'm doing. I have the utmost respect and admiration for the voice actors and what they do. They bring these characters to life and give joy to all the fans, and that's amazing. But one simply cannot expect such material to not be used in some form. That would practically be the same as telling someone a collage is illegal. After all, you're taking a bunch of pictures without the permission of the owners and throwing them all together and calling it yours. It's exactly the same thing. You take the syllables, throw them together, add some notes and out comes a song. It's no different.

So that's why I want to share my Hetaloids once they're ready. Yes, I said plural; Nihonloid (my version) is in the works, and my cute, adorable sister requested Iggiyloid. I'm thinking Russialoid after that, and I'll try to make an Italoid that isn't gravelly like most of the others...

I will NOT share them over Deviantart; that's too risky and they actually clamp down on that stuff. I'll give you guys more information as I work everything out. I will likely use tumblr; I'll make a special Hetaloid blog and y'all can follow (if you want; you don't HAVE to) and submit asks to request a download link. I'll password protect them, probably. If I do get caught (which I don't think is likely 'cause I don't even KNOW who enforces that kind of stuff), then I don't want anyone else going down for it because they shared it with a friend, so don't redistribute, please.

Now, onto the picture itself. First, I'mma credit for the Box art template. I just changed the "VOCALOID" writing at the top to "HETALOID". For the character itself, I spent like, an hour just researching Chinese clothing and stuff; I decided I liked the hanfu best, so I put him in one of those, although it's slightly variated froma typical hanfu and contains a few extra little details (mainly the buttons and screens on the sleeves; it's on both sleeves, but you can't really see them. I'll post his original concept design later so you can get a better look). FUN FACT : He has eight buttons on the sleeve because eight is a lucky number in Chinese lore.

I wanted to SERIOUSLY change his color scheme (he was gonna have blue eyes, and his clothes were gonna be blue and white) but I went along with what I read on Chinese color meanings and stuff, and decided that sticking with the red and gold would be best.

More on Chinaloid to come. I'll let you guys know about a release date, plus I'll post some other art of him. I'm already working on demo songs and little previews to get y'all excited. Plus, there ARE other Hetaloids in the works. And Japan's color scheme will be DRASTICALLY different, simply because I want to have a little fun with his design.

If you guys like this at all, and want to draw him, that'd be great, just credit me if you're using my design please!

Again, for boxart, I don't own Hetalia, UTAU, or Kaida Yuki. I lay claim only to the clothing design for this PARTICULAR Hetaloid.

NOTE: Chinaloid is NOT a complete voicebank, and likely never will be. I don't think I'll be able to gather all the syllables, at least, not until his new character songs come out and give me more to work with. He IS missing a few syllables, but they're easily replaced by the syllables he DOES have.

EDIT:
Listen to a preview here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhX440…

EDIT:
Newer version with piano backing : www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMI569…