nicoblog

Miniature Miku Project

So, what's hot recently in the Nico Nico world?

A bunch of creators are doing a miniature miku project.

Please make sure you have read this post on Miku before you read this post  :)

This is where it started... someone created a Miku with only 10 US$ and with the size of 2cm.

一般普及型マイクロはちゅね（１０００円ｗ）

Inspired by this, many people started to create smaller and smaller Miku.

This one is 1cm

みんなで作ろう！動く１ｃｍはちゅね【ダウンロードあり】

8mm:sm3867869 5mm:sm3863125 4mm:sm3871768 2.65mm:sm3878454

2.5mm

2.65mmに対抗して2.5mmはちゅね【2mmも切れるぞ！】

1.75mm:sm3890365

1mm

みんなで作ろう！動く1mmはちゅね【1.75mmに対抗】

0.5mm

0.5mmはちゅね 説明動画

You can even put those Miku in a ball point pen :P

小型化はちゅねを持ち歩こう！【量産版をボールペンに内蔵（かな？）】

0.45mm (450 micron)

450ミクロン(0.45mm)はちゅね

0.3mm (300 micron)

300ミクロンはちゅね・修正版

This is the link to the tag result of "Miku miniature war" which you can only see if you're logged into Nico Nico
Douga.

There's also paper craft Miku

はちゅね小型化戦争に参加したかった……

How to make paper craft Miku- tutorial

初音ミクのメトロノーム　その7

Miku that get the sound data and moves her hands (actually moves the onions...,)

はちゅねミク小型化戦争に参加してみたかった、がっ！

7/14 update: 200 micron miku appeared!

200ミクロンはちゅね

I think this series of videos can show you the craftsmanship of the Nico Nico techies :)

7/21 update:

Summary video of miniature miku project released;

プロジェクトX－はちゅねミク小型化戦争

Miniature Mikus are going to be displayed at NicoTechMeeting on 2008/10/12 and MakeTokyoMeeting on 11/8!!

はちゅねミク小型化戦争の現物を展示しま～す

10/19 update:

6 nano meter miku

6ナノメートルのはちゅね

I made a miniature miku too- trying to figure out how I can move the onion.

miku

Hatsune-Miku

This is another topic I wrote on the other blog back in February,
but I think I will further ellaborate here so I'll rewrite here as well.

===============================================

I think lots of people are writing about Hatsune-Miku nowadays
but it seems that there still are people who has never seen nor heard of it,
so I would like to briefly summarize what is happening here.

1)What is Hatsune-Miku?

It is a DTM (Desktop Music) software created by Crypton Future Media.

It was released in 2007,and was the best selling DTM software.
  -DTM software that sells 1000 copies are supposed to be hit- Hatsune-Miku sold 30,000.
Its price is 140USD (15,000JPY)

Miku1

According to BCN, Hatsune-Miku got nearly 30% of the share of DTM music,
and won the sound related software div. of BCN ranking last year.

Miku2

Crypton has released their second product of the Character Vocaloid series: Kagamine-Rin/Ren.

I think Hatsune-Miku is creating a completely new phenomena,
where people who had never created music (just listens or hums or sings in Karaoke etc)
started creating original music using Hatsune-Miku.

Just like what blogs did in text world, what Youtube did in video world,
Hatsune-Miku has created consumer generated "music" market in Japan
-although it is a very smaller number of people compared to blogs and videos-

It stimulated people’s creativity, not only did people create music,
but people who heard the music started to draw
amazing pictures, animes, and 3DCGs etc for the music.

2) Why was Hatsune-Miku so successful?

Hatsune-Miku is not just a "software", but it has a character “Miku”
which you can see the picture as above, and its profile.
It is more like a virtual idol, and people who loved Miku started using the software
and it became to have a viral effect.

The voice is that of a very popular anime voice actor, Saki Fujita.

Quality of the software itself was good in that it was using "Vocaloid" software
which was originally developed by YAMAHA.
You can easily create songs and make Miku (with a cute voice) sing it for you
- which stimulated user's motivation.

"Nico Nico Douga" and its community contributed to the success of Hatsune-Miku largely.

3) Examples of various clips created by users

You might notice that the quality of the songs are so good- and yet they are created by users.

【初音ミク】みくみくにしてあげる♪【してやんよ】

初音ミク　が　オリジナル曲を歌ってくれたよ「メルト」

When people create original and wonderful song with Miku,
others started to put pictures for that music, animes for that music,
and even 3DCGs for the music and the quality of those contents are AMAZING.

Examples of Miku 3DCG videos can be seen as follows:

3DみくみくPV♪

恋スルVOC@LOID　（OSTER with 初音ミク３Ｄ　その７）

私の時間　3DPV♪

【初音ミク】melody...3D PV ver1.50

【3DCG】くるっと・おどって・初音ミク【ねんどろいど】

This is a link to Mr.Gibson's (who is one of those amazing 3DCG creators...)lecture series on how to make 3DCGs
... you need to log into Nico Nico Douga, but anyways you'd need to learn Japanese first
to understand the lectures so I won't go into this further :)


With the love towards Miku, people started to create various things.


Miku sings Levan Polkka

The song is not original, but someone made this anime
that Miku plays around with onion and this onion became
the "sign" of Miku and spread throught the community.
Also, this cute deforme Miku came to be called "Hachune-Miku"
which like a baby pronunciation of "Hatsune-Miku".

VOCALOID2 初音ミクに「Ievan Polkka」を歌わせてみた

Amazing video "drawing picture of Miku"

初音ミクが可愛すぎるので描いてみた

This positive and creative viral effect of people creating contents for the love not for the money
(they are not paid...!) is really really amazing.



...also, the music and songs that people created for Miku became popular
and people started to sing or play instruments of those Miku-original music in the real world.


"Miku miku ni shiteageru" orchestra version

「みくみくにしてあげる♪」をオーケストラで！（通常版）op.3939

Played "Melt" with recorders

リコーダーで「メルト」吹いてみた。全部俺。

Black Rock Shooter (Hatsune-Miku original song)

初音ミクがオリジナルを歌ってくれたよ「ブラック★ロックシューター」

Two guys sang this song, and someone remixed Miku and the two guys' songs

【合唱】ブラック★ロックシューター【ミク・halyosy・ゴム】

Fuchagi Family

One of the nico nico users' favorite video series is Fuchagi family.
Actually a professional singer (and one of my favorite singers) writes on her blog that she loves Fuchagi family too :)

Fuchagi is the name of a cat, and the story starts with the little baby kitten Fuchagi coming to Nushi's house.

"Nushi or UP-nushi" is a NicoNico word- it means "the person who uploaded this video".
This comes from the fact- that in general, Nico nico world is an anonymous world and usually people do not reveal their real names, and do not show their faces.  Nushi is used for anyone who uploads videos.
Moreover, in general Japanese internet world is more anonymous than English internet world although people who reveal their real names and faces seems to be increasing.

The audience really enjoys watching Fuchagi grow.

You can see the digest video of Fuchagi story here:

Story of kitten. (Fuchagi Vol.100)

Nushi kept 3 cats then- Chiro, Sharaku and Fuchagi.

Then one day- Nushi hears a cat crying- and found another baby kitten.
He starts to take care of her and named the kitten Elisabeth.

Elizabeth Vol.0 June 8, 2007

And then one day he also finds another poor little soaken wet baby.
He decides to take care of her as well, and named her Luna.

ふちゃぎん家の日常 Vol.21　「雨の日のフラグ」

There are 93 episodes of Fuchagi family videos so far, and what is amazing is that
Elisabeth had her babies and the "Fuchagi family" has grown even larger.

ふちゃぎん家の日常 Vol.89　「にゃんにゃんにゃんにゃん」

And recently Luna had her babies too!

ふちゃぎん家の日常 Vol.93　「育ってます」

The most popular video of the Fuchagi series seems to be the one when Elisabeth came- with 286,647 views.
It's really amazing to see this baby kitten becoming a mother of 6 kittens now!

エリザベスたんがやってきた vol.1

Fuchagi family has become so popular that Nushi got to publish two books already :)
Chiro's book

Picture 3

Fuchagi and Elisabeth's book (with DVD)

Picture 2

And the 3rd book is already being planned- this time it will be a book on Elisabeth and her 6 babies.

Here is the link for tag search result of "Fuchagi" - you need to register to Nico Nico Video to see it.


I think many of the  Japanese people loves to see people, artists, pets grow
as you can see from Tamagocchi etc :)
More on this in the future posts.

Hello World!

I'm starting a new blog on Nico Nico Douga (smiley smiley video).

I wrote the following post on our lab blog back in February this year
and got a criticism that the post was too otaku for the lab :P,
so I decided to go on and keep posting a bit more on my personal blog.

This blog will not be an academic or research blog,
more of a blog from the viewpoint of ordinary users.

My older post on Nico Nico back in February (so the numbers etc are old) :

In Japan, there is an interesting service called "Nico Nico Douga (Smile Video)".
"Nico Nico" means "smile", and "Douga" means "video".

Basically, it is a video sharing site like YouTube etc, but what makes
Nico Nico Douga special is that the users can write comments "on" the video.

================================
1) Overview: what is Nico Nico Douga?
================================

Nico Nico Douga is a video sharing site that enables the users to write comments "on" the video.

In general, video sharing sites (like YouTube) enables the users to
write comments beneath the videos in the comments section, but not "on" the video.

So what is good about putting comments on the videos?
The answer is- that the comments itself becomes communication / contents / art   :)

Personally speaking, if I were to view the same video content,
I'd rather see it on Nico Nico Douga than any other video sharing sites.

One example of Nico Nico videos can be seen here:
You can see how people writes the lyrics of the main part of the song... it's sort of like online karaoke :)

 

【初音ミク】みくみくにしてあげる♪【してやんよ】

A)  Comments as communication method
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

For example, people watch videos of the seminars and comment and / or ask questions
and answer those questions etc "on" the video.

This clip is from a speech of Mr. Sasaki who works for Crypton
and is in charge of a Desktop Music Software called "Hatsune-Miku"
talking at the Japan Developers Conference.
Their CEO Ito-san loves the clips that the users created with Hatsune-Miku,
and Sasaki-san mentions how Ito-san is watching the Miku clips of Nico Nico Douga at his office :)

It is a very lovable situation when you imagine- and people are smiling
"wwww" means "laughter" in Nico Nico world.

B) "Danmaku comments"
------------------------------------------------

When you listen to music or go to Karaoke, people tends to sing along the "main phrase".
Just like that, people "comments" of the main phrase of songs in Nico Nico Douga.

"danmaku" means "curtain fire" in Japanese.
In the following picture, you can see how comments look like curtain fire or barrage.

 

C) Comments as "art"
------------------------------------

Anyone can easily comment on Nico Nico Douga, it is very easy.
And when you think about "comments", you usually imagine a short and simple one line text.
However, Nico Nico users' creativity far exceeded that presumption.
They create great art works using the "comment function" of Nico Nico Douga
using different size, colors, speed, etc with various techniques and calculations.

This is a great video to see those "comment arts"

組曲『ニコニコ動画』コメントアート集

(more on this song "Kumikyoku" later)

Also, when this Kumikyoku was viewed 2million times or 3 million times,
those "shokunin"s starts to actively demonstrate their techniques as celebration.

2 million views festival
3 million views festival week 1
3 million views festival week 2
3 million views festival week 3

I think the reason why Nico Nico users were able to create such artistic comments
is because of ASCII art culture that here in Japan way before there was Nico Nico Douga.
 
へのへのもへじ existed from the old old days,

 
and other AA(ASCII ARTS) had existed in Japan for a long time.

　　 　∧＿∧　　　　／￣￣￣￣￣
　　（　´∀｀）＜　   hello!
　　（　　　　　　　　　） 　　＼＿＿＿＿＿
　　　｜ ｜　|
　　（_＿）＿）

======================================================
2) The community / Nico Nico and its stats
======================================================

I think the community is the most important aspect of Nico Nico Douga.

They are extraordinarily talented in finding interesting / funny stuff
and / or creating interesting / funny stuff.

Systemwise, being able to comment "on" the video" is not unique any more
- there are various competitors that entered the market.

However, what makes Nico Nico so special is that the community and their contents
that create the addictive-ness of Nico Nico Douga.

Number of users of Nico Nico and its competitors (as of October, 2007),
data source Net Ratings
 
Nico Nico Douga        3,860,000
Jimaku.in                     119,000
Nif Nif Douga                 11,000

YouTube has 14,551,000 users which far exceeds Nico Nico Douga,
but as for the amount of time spent in the site, Nico Nico is double that of YouTube.

Nico Nico Douga      2 hours 50 minutes 10 seconds
YouTube                 1 hour     6 minutes 53 seconds

"Nico Chu" has become a popular world,
and it means "Nico Nico addict"
People becomes addicted to Nico Nico so much.

This chart is also from Netratings (press release of 2007/9/21)

It compares number of visits and hours of usage per user
of YouTube and Nico Nico Douga- you can see how drastic Nico Nico Douga is attracting usage.

5,000,000 registered users (as of 2008/1/19 )
174,000 paid users(Nico Nico Premium) (as of 2008/1/21)
1,000,000 mobile users (as of 2008/2/10)
800,000,000th comment posted (as of 2008/1/25)

- Data source: Dwango

60 million PV / day, 2,000,000,000 PV /  month
(Operated by only 16 Web servers and 10 DB servers!!)

-Data source: Nikkei IT Pro

6,000 videos per day is being uploaded

-Data source: @Pia interview

Nico Nico's peak traffic is 60Gbps, and is worth 1/12 of the total traffic of Japan.
Active users are 1 million people per day.

-Data source: CNet Japan

Business model of Nico Nico Douga is not merely Ad model.
Revenue per month is over 100,000,000 yen (100,000 USD) ,
most of which comes from paid customers (Nico Nico Premium users who pays 525 yen per month).

- Data source: Nikkei BP Online

- Data source CNet Japan

Viacom was suing YouTube(Google) in US, Viacom Japan is having a contract with Nico Nico Douga.
Viacom Japan will create "MTV brand" page within Nico Nico Douga, and have a revenue share on the ad revenue.

- Data source: CNet Japan

======================================================
3) User Generated Contents
======================================================

One feature of Nico Nico Douga is that not many people do not upload
mere packages such as TV dramas and animes,
as mere packages are mostly deleted in Nico Nico Douga.

Most of the contents are user generated contents such as MADs (fan-made videos) or DIYs (songs, dances, etc)

People create and remix videos every day,
and there is a great "Remix Culture" within the Nico Nico Community.

In Nico Nico Douga, not only the video itself, but various things are  "User generated".

A) User generated videos

Videos are created and uploaded by the users so it is user generated,
but as I mentioned previously, contents in Nico Nico are mostly MADs, Remixes and DIYs
that are created by the users, not mere packages of TV shows, animes etc.

B) User generated comments

Of course comments are generated by the users,
but the way users started to create art with comments are very very unique.

C) User generated tags

You can add tag to your own video, but you can add tag to other people's videos too,
and the "tag" section has become an  area to communicate among the viewers and the video owner.

D) User generated affiliates (Nico Nico Ichiba)

Users can add products to the affiliate section,
and there are various funny / joke products in those sections
as the Nico Nico users LOVES finding and creating funny things.

There are lots of chaotic and crazyish videos in Nico Nico Douga.
Beneath those videos, you can find affiliates such as a ringtone saying "hey, calm down..."
or a CD called "hmm, this can be okay...".

This is an amazing video using ARToolKit, and its affiliate section has
a ringtone saying "The future is in our hands!" and "The great Japan"
and "Bach: Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme" meaning there is a calling...

BTW, currently even if you put lots of videos, lots of comments, lots of affiliates,
none of the revenue goes to the users.
Then why do people participate? It is because it is fun. Because they like it.
 
They are doing it for the love, not for the money.

===========================
4) Examples of Nico Nico Videos
===========================

Contents you can see in Nico Nico Douga are various.

A)  "Onmyoji".
This is one of the most famous videos, and is said to be one of the first "Danmaku" videos.

It was broadcasted on a Japanese TV show on 2007/3/17.
Personally, what interested me the most was that the guest in the TV show
was shown various services and clips and in the end when she was asked which one was the most interesting she chose this.

Until then, I thought these videos were not for "ordinary" people like her, but it was... :)

B) DIYs

Played "Jonetsu Tairiku" alone
(Believe it or not, this person is still a highschool student)

Drawn a picture series
"an ear speaker" "Sleeping Pharmacist"

Created the Opening video of an anime "Higurashi" using Excel

"Hello Windows", a song made by sampling Windows system sounds
　A further "remix of Hello Windows"

C) Cats

Cats are LOVED by Nico Nico community
"Neco Nabe""Lethal Weapon Kitty"

D) VOCALOID

Hatsune-Miku is the most famous of the VOCALOID series.
Please refer to my previous article I have posted before.

Some more videos of Miku:

3DCG: dancing Miku
Mikus sang "Kimi wo nosete"

E) IDOLM@STER

IDOLM@STER is a name of a game that enables you to
become a producer and produce an idol talent.

BTW, this Master Artists series has the total of 6,000,000,000 yen
including all the games and related products, which is like... gosh!!!

- Data source: ASCII

Tokachi
Go My Way

F) Kumikyoku Nico Nico Douga (Suite Nico Nico Douga)

There were lots of hit songs within Nico Nico Douga
(regardless of whether it is a hit outside Nico Nico...)

Makka na Chikai  (Version J)
Gum- Rockman- Okusenman! (Version Gum)
Priests' Aquarion (Full Version)

From the collection of those songs,
Kumikyoku Nico Nico Douga was created.

Then, various remixes were created.

piano version
origninal
Version J　（1,272,933 views!)
Grand Finale

G) Real world impact

A company called Rantis decided to release a CD of those Nico Nico musicians

Rantis Kumikyoku feat.Nico Nico Artists [Maxi]

Also, Nico Nico musicians decided to do live performances.

H) DANJO

An artist called "Taro" sang a song called "Danjo (man and woman)"
and it became very popular in Nico Nico world, with various videos created.

Then, a user created an anime video of VOCALOID characters dancing to this song:
Bakaito and Hetaren dancing with Danjo
Bakaito and Hetaren increased version

and this anime video became traced by hundreds of people with different characters.
Danjo with Higurashi
Danjo with Moyashimon

People also started dancing to this song
And someone remixed this dance video
and this dance was remixed with other videos....

I) UMAUMA

A Swedish artist called "Caramell" released a song called "Caramelldansen" back in 2001.
The lyric sounds like this in Japanese : "No I don't need Barsamico vinegar" "ooh, ooh, yum yum"

Then, someone found this flash anime created in August, 2006
and started copying the video with various characters.

Caramelldansen
Caramelldansen IDOLM@STER
Caramelldansen Donad
Caramelldansen CLANNAD
Caramelldansen Kagamine Rin/Ren
Caramelldansen Kaito
Caramelldansen SOS
Caramelldansen Pikachu

There are various "digest" versions

tag search result for "caramelldansen" amounts to 1,024 clips!

People also uploads videos of various seminars, tutorials
(how to use various softwares), and learn/teach through those videos