This devlog will focus on how I found voice actors. This is part two of a discussion and post mortem of sorts on making a trailer. Part one is: How to Design a trailer. https://thesugarray.itch.io/romancing-the-sun/devlog/212569/planning-a-trailer

Shakyra Dunn helped me out a lot with the casting call. She is a writer, author, and voice actor.  She not only voiced Dawn but she helped me every step of the way. If you want to work with Shakyra you can find her on twitter @shakyradunn, She has a demo reel pinned to her Twitter. She loves voicing in Games! She is less enthusiastic to hold your hand through your casting call. She did it for me because she is my friend. I'm going to try to load in all the information here so you don't have to bother her.
But if you are just looking for one voice actress, your search might be over! You are welcome.

TLDR and checklist
Be honest about what you want.
Be nice, voice actors work to get work Don't waste their time.
How big is the part?
Do you want auditions?
What will you pay?
Point of Contact.
Cut-off date. Work due date.
File types
Use #castingcall #voiceacting #voiceactor twitter tags
Is it a secret? Do you need a NDA?

Why do a casting call?
Voicing things yourself kind of sucks. There is a lot of expertise and equipment that voice actors already have. Sure you could spend $60-500 on equipment to record your voice. Or you could make a casting call and have a number of people help.

Be honest
Take the time to write out your script for what you want. If you are just planning a trailer like me or if you want to voice your entire game. You will need to have a good idea of what you want.
Once you know what you want, be clear about what you want. Don't hide how much work something will be. If you don't know how long something will be, say that but also give good estimations.
Being nice is about being professional. Don't call names. Don't be mean, if you don't like someone or their voice. NEVER ever tweet that you are glad you were able to replace a person because you thought they sucked. Especially if you are not paying or not paying right away.

What information do you need?

Voice actors need all the information you can spare. Genre, tone, themes, character arcs, secret motivations, how big is the part, how many word count, how much you are paying, how long they have to apply, all specific dates, if you want auditions, when is their work due, who do they contact for questions?
The more specific things that you want, the longer things will take. Live Auditions will take longer than auditions, which will take longer than checking out people's demo reels. If you are looking for someone who sounds like Barak Obama, it might take longer to pick someone out.

The casting call: https://thesugarray.itch.io/romancing-the-sun/devlog/213216/romancing-the-sun-tr...

Mistakes with my casting call
I made a few mistakes with my casting call. I didn't plan any dates. No end date to the casting call and no end date for when the work is due. Which, is fine. I am new. You will probably make a few mistakes, also. Just be fair and kind. I didn't have an ending date so I make a week and a half countdown once I had a good number of applications. I never made a work due date, so I just asked the actors when the could or wanted to have their work in.
The voice actors will also make mistakes. Files might be quiet, they might night say the sentence the way you want to hear it. Someone could look at 1,200 and say one thousand two hundred or twelve hundred. You can work with it, edit it, cut it, or ask them to rerecord. Be nice and patient. If you are on a deadline, be clear and they might be able to help or they might not.
I only got one actor to submit their files in the format I wanted but they all worked anyway so there was no problem.

GETTING THE WORD OUT
Now that you have a casting call people need to see it. Fortunately, there is a community of voice actors that uses a few hashtags and retweets jobs on twitter. Twitter is all I used but if you want there are places on the itchio forum, lemmasoft, and several gaming discords like LOVE VN that include posts for talent.

On Twitter
Use the hashtags
Thank people for retweeting
Thank people for showing interest
Answer questions
It is okay to retweet it two or three times a day to get the word out

The casting call tweet:https://twitter.com/ray_thought/status/1350260658965782531

Our results. By the time I got the workible number of entries, the casting call had 150 views, the impression of the tweet were around 3k. By the deadline, the blog post had 270 views and the tweet had 4k impressions. Impressions are a good metric for knowing if your reach is going far but the main thing that matters is getting a handful of voice actors interested in the project.

Better Results
There are a few things you can do to get more interest. Most voice actors are men in their twenties. If you have male parts you'll get more interest.
I'll repeat, retweet your casting call. Do it during different times of day. Your twitter followers shouldn't mind, as long as you don't spam it.
Paid work will get more interest. Be open and honest and supply numbers as soon as possible. Five bucks is five bucks. Forty is better. Fifty cents a word before editing is nothing to sneeze at for longer parts.

NDAs
Disclosure agreements. Even if your project isn't a secret, you still might want to look up some NDAs so that you can be clear about what you can do with the voice actor's recording. Do you want it to advertise with it? Will it play on youtube, twitter? Will you hire an ad ajency that might put it on a variety of sites? Do you want to use it on more than one game? Sequels?
Or, you could want to keep the project secret until the release date. Information in your scripts and in the agreement can be held from public view but remember that if it is in your casting call notice, it is in the public.

I'll try to answer any question you have. There are a few things like casting call jargon and 
GOOD LUCK! 

GAME UPDATE!!!

Romancing the Sun is still in it's planning stages. Chapters 3-5 will establish some rhythms of play and the themes and story beats will come out in chapter 6 finally and in the endings.

Candied Oblivion

Candied Oblivion is an adult game but there will be no adult material in this vlog, as always.

It is definitely my fault that this project has seemed like it has been almost finished from the start. The game being in 1080 is taking a lot longer on the render time. Still, almost two weeks of rendering with breaks has left more than two hundred images. That's backgrounds, characters, and special renders like below. And I have over twenty in the queue waiting to pop out.

The game is still three scenes. And I suppose I have six planned phases for the sex scene. Warm-up, standing, laying are done in writing and rendering. I am thinking of giving myself an out and writing the finish in case I get impatient and save two phases for expansions.