Melba Toast

* Placeholder pixel model (blinking) by Kotge
* WIP Live2d model by sugarph
* Concept art by 2pfrog

**Melba Toast** is an English-speaking AI VTuber currently in active development by the Neurocord community. Development on Melba Toast began on October 18, 2023, when Mato Kuroshira initiated a forum thread titled "Melba Toast REAL :SCHIZO:".

Two days prior to this, 2pfrog created a concept art for Melba Toast, which served as inspiration for the development and was a catalyst for the aforementioned forum thread.

## History

### Background

> My favourite Hololive streamer is none other than Melba Toast! She's great!
>
> Melba Toast is very weird. She's toast shaped and she always makes toast jokes. It's strange, but she's always up for a chat!
>
> Evil Neuro

Contrary to initial beliefs, Melba Toast was not an actual member of Hololive. Evil Neuro introduced Melba Toast during an *osu!* stream on October 7th, 2023, sparking a humorous reaction in the Twitch chat with "W H OMEGALUL" messages.

### Current status:

Melba Toast's official debut on November 21st, 2023 resulted in over 200 viewers, and 600 followers in total.

After what originally was supposed to be a one-week project became one month project instead, many viewers were surprised how much Melba had grown since Vedal had leaked her broken and barely functional first test to the world. Featuring not only a lot of lore about the character and a showcase of the finished Vtuber model, Melba also responded to chats questions and sang several songs.

The future status of the streams is currently unknown, but presumably Melba will continue to stream irregularly on Twitch.

Several weeks before the official debut, Neurocord moderator maya created Melba's sister Burnt Melba as a joke, going so far as to create a twitch account for her as well and letting her stream there several times a week. Though discouraged by the lack of large scale success which is likely down to a lack of advertisement, Burnt Melba has gotten a small but dedicated fanbase for her unfiltered, unhinged responses and for exploring the niche of depressed, self destructive goth girls.

#### AI

Melba's LLM is being worked by KeksMember. The interface is done but is missing pre-made memories and better prompt management.

To further work on prompt management, Ludich created a character.ai Melba for users to test her responses.

#### VTuber model

There are currently 2 VTuber models for Melba in the works.

##### Placeholder model by Kotge

Pixel model blinkingRIGGED Pixel model
A placeholder model based on 2pfrog's concept art to be used until the Live2D model is finished. It has been rigged by EphemeralDefect in Scratch and by Kotge in Godot.

##### Live2D model by sugarph

Live2D model
A WIP model which has a slightly different design than the pixel one.

#### Voice

Hayhaycoat provided the voice for Melba Toast, trained by Cornflakes for voice conversion and singing, and by redzuzu for the VITS TTS model.

#### Graphic Designs

Mato Kuroshira made the main overlay layout, while KarstenPH made the layout for the Content Overlay and the original first transition.

The content overlay and transition was made in Powerpoint, with assets produced by 2pfrog and Canruf