AVANNA

**AVANNA** is an English VOCALOID developed and distributed by Zero-G Limited, released in December 2012 for the *VOCALOID3* engine. Her voice is provided by an Irish female singer, Rachel., whose last name cannot be revealed due to privacy reasons.

## Concept

AVANNA was designed to be a soft voice with a "Celtic twist" to it. AVANNA is 18 years old, female, and her artist has stated that AVANNA herself is of Irish descent. According to the artist, in AVANNA's early concept design, her height was 5'6" and her weight was 156 lbs. The artist had stated that in her final design, her weight is around 110 lbs. Again, it should be noted that these are just the personal preferences of the artist and not official canon. A white horse named Lancelot was originally planned as a pet for Avanna, although this never came to fruition.

### Etymology

While it is unknown why Zero-G chose the name "Avanna"; according to the name's origins, it is a combination of the old English word "Ava," meaning "breath of life," and the Latin name "Anna," meaning "gracious." This results in the implied meaning of her name being "gracious breath of life."

### Appearance

Zero-G requested that AVANNA should have a fantasy-based look to her. According to AkiGlancy, AVANNA's artist, the model for AVANNA's body figure was her own sister, who was particularly curvy.

AVANNA was originally designed to be an elf, but this concept was scrapped when she had to be re-designed upon YAMAHA's request. However, a faded version of this design can still be seen on the final boxart. AkiGlancy has stated that fans can draw AVANNA with elf ears if they wish to do so, and upon request, has also uploaded her own version with elf ears. YAMAHA also requested that AVANNA be more "anime"-styled.

During the process of AVANNA's design, even though alternate colors were considered, Zero-G specifically asked for her to have black hair. According to AkiGlancy, the reason why the AVANNA's hair was lengthened was because she was requested to make her look more feminine.

AVANNA’s outfit was inspired by Roman-Britannia, specifically, the Celts who received Roman influence during the first century of Britannia’s occupation by the Roman Empire. AkiGlancy has shown several specific historical clothing references she was inspired by on her twitter. The little flower shapes worked into AVANNA’s outfit are clovers, hinting at her Irish heritage. The rings around AVANNA's waist float/spin with the power of her voice, but will stay motionless when she is not singing. The gems on her skirt and the rings were inspired by blue topaz gemstones.

During her responses to DEX and DAINA, AkiGlancy spoke on her art of AVANNA with a violin specifically. Though she liked the design very much, Zero-G did not think it was a good idea, as customers who did not read the product description would think the product was for a violin instrument. She also stated that her art of Avanna always has 7 freckles on each cheek.

### Relations

* Unnamed Celtic male - A conceptualized complementary voice bank that would've had masculine vocals.

## History

### Marketing

For AVANNA, Zero-G seemed to adopt a similar technique to the one used for OLIVER's promotion. Upon AVANNA's official unveiling, AkiGlancy was able to talk directly to English-speaking VOCALOID fans and answer questions about her involvement with AVANNA. Most of the focus was on the VocaloidOtaku forums, and also the topic about her official artwork. This led to bonus promotional art material, AkiGlancy's "developer's diary" and design notes being handed out quite freely.

## Voicebanks

AVANNA
AVANNA had improved consonants over past English vocals. Her vocal was that of a Celtic female. She sings with a clear and sweet vocal.
* AVANNA (*VOCALOID3*), December 22, 2012

## Reputation

### Sales

Avanna was the most successful of Zero-G's VOCALOIDs, managing to remain within the top 10 products list years after her release, starting from 2013 onward. Her sales success came as a surprise as previous VOCALOIDs from their company had completely missed the top 10 spot, save for Prima who stole 9th place in 2011.

In 2013, AVANNA was Zero-G's most popular product for the entire year, and the first VOCALOID to do so. She was also the only VOCALOID to appear in the company's top 25 products for the year 2013.

In the following year of 2014 AVANNA once again claimed the no.1 spot for best seller, thus making her the first VOCALOID remain the best Zero-G seller for two consecutive years in a row.

The position of no.1 was held by her once again in 2015. She was, however almost beaten by newcomers DEX (no.2) and DAINA (no.3) despite both being out for a much shorter time period than her.

Though she lost several places during 2016, she managed to get 5th spot on the ranking for the year, just one spot behind DAINA who got the 4th spot.

Also in 2015 Crypton's on-line download store Sonicwire announced that AVANNA had been the 9th most successful VOCALOID product sold on their website. She was the only "Engloid" present on the list.

In 2017, Zero-G added a top 10 products to the front page of their website. AVANNA, DEX and DAINA were often among the 10 top products an were often found within the 1-5 position overall. At the end of the year Zero-G released its "2017 Best sellers" list, all 3 made it onto their top 20s list.

### Reaction

AVANNA was fairly well met upon introduction, but struggled to get more than 10,000+ views on her demo songs. She has remained one of the lesser popular releases for English in *VOCALOID3*, despite the praises for her quality compared to many of the other English releases for the engine version. Compared to other VOCALOIDs, her presence in the fandom wasn't that well established and she struggled to get coverage. English VOCALOIDs, while never complete failures, had issues with getting sales and compared to OLIVER's presence among VOCALOID fans and producers, there didn't seem much attention on her at all. When it was revealed she had reached the no.1 spot in Zero-G's yearly sales, it was considered a dark horse moment and a surprise that she did so.

On May 26, 2014, Equipboard tweeted that they listed AVANNA on their website at the suggestion of a member. They quoted EDM artist, Porter Robinson, as a notable user of the product.

AVANNA's popularity, according to Google Trends peaked in Jan 2013, a month after she was released. She lost much of this status a year later from Jan 2014, and later began to regain popularity and towards the end off the VOCALOID3. She managed to maintain a stable but small popularity growth.

### Misc

In 2014, AVANNA claimed the position of the first English only developed vocal to have a song with 1,000,000+ views on YouTube. She was also the second English VOCALOID to have video featuring their vocal reach 1,000,000+ views, the first was OLIVER who was used in the "Bee and PuppyCat" series.

In 2015 a survey was made based on the popularity of VOCALOIDs on website niconico. For the year 2014, AVANNA was the 35th most popular VOCALOID. She was also the 3rd most popular "Engloid".

### Achievements

* First and only English female VOCALOID3
* First and only Zero-G VOCALOID3
* First VOCALOID to have her illustration to be done by a VOCALOID Producer.
* VOCALOID with the most breath samples (44).

## References

1. ↑ [1]
2. ↑ link
3. ↑ link
4. ↑ link
5. ↑ link
6. ↑ link
7. ↑ [2]: *Yamaha was concerned that Zero-G’s approved design was not “Anime” styled enough and asked for me to revise it into a cuter, modern anime style.*
8. ↑ link
9. ↑ https://twitter.com/AkiGlancy/status/1184485985540890626?s=20
10. ↑ link
11. ↑ link
12. ↑ ~~VocaloidOtaku Avanna topic~~[dead link]
13. ↑ ~~VocaloidOtaku topic about her official artwork~~[dead link]
14. ↑ http://zero-glimited.cmail1.com/t/ViewEmail/y/311FC6D471A126D8/A10CC7377B4C425B1C65CA3F48968C2E
15. ↑ link
16. ↑ link
17. ↑ link
18. ↑ lin
19. ↑ link
20. ↑ Zero-g website
21. ↑ https://zero-g.co.uk/collections/2017-bestsellers?utm\_source=Newsletter+Subscribers&utm\_campaign=773daa65a8-EMAIL\_CAMPAIGN\_2018\_01\_10&utm\_medium=email&utm\_term=0\_aef2f88805-773daa65a8-24794245&mc\_cid=773daa65a8&mc\_eid=4df52f594c
22. ↑ link
23. ↑ link
24. ↑ link