Personality
According to his official profile, Oliver "has a slightly melancholy but gentle character." When it comes to music, he likes "everything" and his "music-writing philosophy comes down to this: 'Create any kind of music as long as it is something someone feels something for'." [3]
Development
Plans for making VOCALOID Oliver were revealed through the announcement for a character voice vote event launched by Yamaha called VOCALOID™ New Character Voice Audition.[4] This event called fans of VOCALOID, as well as members of the public at large, to vote for "an image character [whose] singing voice you want to become a VOCALOID".[5]
The event took place during a period from January 31 to February 29 in 2020 with four pre-selected choices for character models and voice providers.[6] The official results from this online voice voting contest declared British musician Oliver Sykes the winner from a grand total of 67,521 votes submitted.[7]
During production of VOCALOID Oliver, Yamaha Corporation reached out and enlisted several people to join the creative design process, this included Sykes working directly alongside the Yamaha Corporation to voice direct, create song demos to tune his VOCALOID voice bank on, as well as offer insight throughout the production. Bplats worked alongside Sykes and contributed their knowledge on Vocaloid and music as well.[8]
Music releases
The first published songs using VOCALOID Oliver include; a demo song created using VOCALOID Oliver titled ‘my name is OLIVER,’ composed and written jointly by DTM producer ShonenT and producer and lyricist, YASUHIRO(康寛); "My R" by Japanese composer Junky.[9] On September 8, 2023 a digital single was released featuring VOCALOID Hatsune Miku singing and VOCALOID Oliver rapping called "Electric Angel" by Vocaloid producers, EasyPop."[10] Oliver was used within Japanese VTuber culture after NIJISANJI EN's Elira Pendora covered "Electric Angel" and reached 530,000 views as of January 6th, 2023 after only two months from Oliver's original Japanese release date.[11]