Join In With Celebrating Otomachi Una’s 7th Anniversary & VOCALOID 6 AI Bank Now!
Otomachi Una’s annual anniversary illustration and song contests have swung by again in the blink of an eye, and as always, fans from around the world are welcome to participate! What’s even more special is that this coincides with the release of VOCALOID 6 AI Otomachi Una on the 22nd June 2022 (and with a new voicebank comes new official designs for the vocal synth, naturally).
There’s still time to submit your works, so find out how you can participate in the newly announced contests (and possibly win a prize) below!
※The following news coverage is all unofficial
Calendar Illustration Contest
As with previous years, this year will see a new calendar released as merchandise, featuring winning artwork from various artists who entered this exact contest! Entrants can submit their artworks for a particular month or season and hope to see their own work included. Even if your artwork isn’t featured in the calendar, you might still see it used to decorate the Official Otomachi Una-themed train car, the “Unapipigo” in the near future, so there’s no better time try!
Submission dates:
From June 22nd to August 21st 2023 at 3PM (JST). Winners should be announced around September of this year.
Submission method:
Submissions must be made via the content hosting site TINAMI. If you do not know how to sign up for/use TINAMI, please see our section below.
Prizes available: (12 winners )
- An autographed art board from Aimi Tanaka (Otomachi Una’s voice provider)
- Amazon giftcard worth ¥5,000
- 1x Otomachi Una 2024 calendar
Note: Around 50 illustrations may also be used inside the Una train cars running on the Tenryu Hamanako Railway (potentially also including calendar competition winners). If you would like to opt out of this, you need to add the “ラッピングNG” tag when applying.
Check out the illustration contest page here!
If you do not have a TINAMI account
You can sign up for one by clicking here.
Click on the blue button that says 契約に同意する (“Agree to the rules”)
On the next page, enter the following:
- A. Your email address
- B. Your username
- C. Password
- D. Password (again)
- E. Male (男性) or female (女性)
- F. Date of birth: Year (年)/Month (月)/Day (日)
- G. Whereabouts you live. You can either choose a prefecture in Japan or select 「日本外国(Outside Japan)」if you are an international entrant.
- Once finished, click 「登録する」(register) at the bottom of the page.
To finalise your account, you’ll need to fill in:
- H. Profile picture (You can choose an image file for your picture, or select the 「デフォルトに戻す」(stay with the default pfp image for now))
- I. Your self introduction. You can edit this later, so you don’t need to write a lot here just yet if you’re not ready to. Just make sure to add at least a greeting so that you can finish account setup.
- J. Select しない to not show your gender on your profile, or する to make it visible to anyone.
- K. Select しない to not show your age on your profile, or する to make it visible to anyone.
- L. Select しない to not show your location on your profile, or する to make it visible to anyone.
- M. Select しない to not show your support history on your profile, or する to make it visible to anyone.
- Once finished, click 「プロフィール登録する」(register profile) at the bottom of the page.
Then all you need to do is check your emails for an account verification email from TINAMI, and follow the link to use your account!
Note: in order to enter the competition, you’ll need to upload your artwork to TINAMI.
/!\ Please note that only Otomachi Una can be part of your entry. Entries featuring other vocal synths will be disqualified.
- When uploading your art, make sure to use the tag 「ct113una」to make your entry elligible. Please also make sure to add a seasonal/month related tag, to allow the judges to choose one piece of art for each month of the calendar. You can add tags for months like 「1月」 (January), 「2月」 (February) etc. or add a season: 「春」 (spring), 「夏」 (summer), 「秋」 (Autumn) or 「冬」 (winter).
- Your piece needs to be an image featuring Otomachi Una, in a way that it is clearly her (i.e. completely changing her hairstyle or body type would make her look less recognisable.) You can use official Una designs (e.g. her Sugar, Spicy, Talk versions) or your own design, but with the latter, it must be easy to recognise that it’s a drawing of Una.
- Your artwork needs to be 1378 pixels (width) x 2039 pixels (length) in size and 350dpi.
- Please make sure to retain the original art file even after submitting an entry, just in case the organisers need it, or any adjustments need to be made.
- Please don’t use any fonts or freely available materials in your work
- No images that utilise AI are permitted for entry. Even if AI is only used for one aspect of the overall piece (e.g. the background), it will not be elligible to win the contest. If it is found that you have used AI even AFTER you have received an award, your win and prize may be rescinded.
- Imagery featuring anything train related aren’t necessary, but feel free to add them!
- You can submit as many entries as you wish!
- Please note that there may be some differences in colour if your winning artwork is in a CMYK format, since this will be transferred to a RGB format for printing in the calendar and for the in-train decorations.
- Please DO NOT post your artwork to anywhere else (aside from Tinami) until at least 2 months after the winners for this contest have been announced. If you’d like to share your artwork in the meantime, you’re allowed to share a link to your upload from Tinami to e.g. Twitter or Facebook.
Song contest
And to accompany the illustration is VOCALOTRACKS‘ annual song contest! Although song contests in previous years have been in partnership with mobile game Leaping Destiny, the collaboration this year seems to be more focused on Una’s new voicebank. Nevertheless, aspiring vocal synth producers should definitely consider entering this year for the chance of winning one of the great prizes listed. One of the winners may even have their song added to the JoySound system for the sake of singing at Karaoke!
Contest details:
/!\ Please note that there appears to be a contradiction in the contest rules which may be confusing.
It initially states on the official contest page that entrants “must produce a song using VOCALOID 6 AI Otomachi Una ONLY”, and then says below this “you may use any of the following voicebanks for your song: VOCALOID6 AI Otomachi Una / VOCALOID 4 Otomachi Una”. While we at VocaSphere are not experts, we might recommend you contact the contest organisers for clarification, or if you want to be safe, you can stick with using her VOCALOID 6 AI voicebank exclusively.
You cannot use Otomachi Una TalkEx as the main voice for the song, but the additional voice material from the package may be used. Other VOCALOID products from Internet Co. may be used in minor roles throughout the song, such as in the chorus, but products from other vocal synth companies are not permitted.
Submission dates: 22nd June 2023 – 21st August 2023 at 15:00 (JST)
Submission method:
- Submissions must be posted to NicoNicoDouga (NND) with the tag “音街ウナ楽曲コンテスト2023” within the submission deadline, and the following form must be completed and submitted: contest form
- Once you’ve submitted the form, you should recieve a an entry number by email. Make sure to add this entry number into the description of your song upload on NND.
- Songs which have been submitted to NicoNicoDouga before are allowed to be submitted entries into this year’s contest (2023).
- Each entrant can enter only once.
- Genre: free (no specific theme)
- Submissions cannot have a pre-existing contract or copyright agreement with any third parties to be elligible for entry.
Your song can be of any genre, provided that it is an original song that does not infringe on any copyright laws.
You will need to supply the following:
- Song data in .wav format, 16bit, 44.1kHz, STEREO; file size must be within 65MB (no more than 6 minutes long)
- Lyrics in .txt format
- Thumbnail in .jpg format, 2500×2500 pixels, aspect ratio 1:1
- Photo of the art in .jpg format, 2500×2500 pixels, aspect ratio 1:1 (may be used for distribution sites)
- Creator/Artist name for one representing member
- All creator/artist name(s)
- Song title
- Name of the song recording rights holder
- Name of the copyright holder
Translation of the contest form contents:
- Name (online username/handle is fine)
- Email address (that you can be contacted with)
- NicoNico URL for the song you want to submit
- Space for any messages you would like to send the organisers (this will not affect the outcome of the contest)
Prizes available:
Grand prize (1 winner)
- An autographed shikishi (illustrated cardboard panel) from Aimi Tanaka
- Amazon giftcard worth ¥100,000
- 1x Download version of any Internet co. software package (so long as it has been released at the time of winning)
- 1x Otomachi Una 2024 calendar
Excellence award (1 winner)
- An autographed shikishi from Aimi Tanaka
- Amazon giftcard worth ¥10,000
- 1x Download version of any Internet co. software package (so long as it has been released at the time of winning).
- 1x Otomachi Una 2024 calendar
- Tenryuhama one day free ticket
Additional prizes (some people)
- An autographed shikishi (illustrated cardboard panel) from Aimi Tanaka
- Amazon giftcard worth ¥2,000
- 1x Download version of any Internet co. software package (so long as it has been released at the time of winning)
- 1x Otomachi Una 2024 calendar
Also note that:
- Entrants under the age of 20 may need to provide written consent from a guardian in regards to application guidelines and precautions to allow the entrant to participate properly and be able to win the competition outright (especially if you come from/are based in Japan).
- If it is a collaborative work, please get the permission of all collaborators.
- In certain cases, VOCALOTRACKS may ask for certain aspects of a song to be edited or changed prior to its release, should it be the winning entry.
Winners may have their songs distributed on various music distribution services such as:
- iTunes
- amazon music
- AWA
- Google Play Music
- KKBOX
- LINE MUSIC
- MORA
- Spotify
- YouTube
- RecoChoku
- And more!
Overseas distribution sites may include
- iTunes (any country)
- amazon music
- eMusic T-Mobile WorldWide
- Google Play Music
- KKBOX
- Spotify
Check out the song contest page here!
Best of luck to all entrants! We can’t wait to see what fans have in store to celebrate Una’s 7th anniversary this year!
Links
Contest announcement on the Otomachi Una website
Official illustration competition page on Tinami
Official song competition page on VOCALOTRACKS
Otomachi Una
