Good to hear you're about to begin voice work! It is an incredibly rewarding process, though it is a lot of hard work. But once in place the voices add one heck of a lot of life.
The process has been very straight forward. To most actors I have simply sent a long list of lines, with a comment after each line, regarding mood, like so:
230: "Boy do I wish I had a bowl of pudding!" (happily, dreamily yearning after pudding)
In the cases of conversations for most actors, I simply showed them the full conversation in text so they knew what they were replying to. For our main character I didn't do this though, it would have been too much text to handle. In that case I tried to be specific with my (comments) and when the line was delivered in an "off" manner, I simply asked for a retake. Normally each line delivered to me would be delivered in 3-8 different takes. This is incredibly helpful, since it gives the actor a couple of tries at different approaches, with emphasis on different things in the sentence. Going through all these takes is a huge project but it's definitely worth the effort.
As for flow of conversations, what we've got implemented so far sounds great. The rhythm is surprisingly good even though none of the actors acted "toward" one another. I am confident that we will find places that need tweaking though, once all dialog has been implemented into the game. It is
A LOT of dialog.
If you're looking to cast your game I can wholeheartedly recommend headhunting on the
VAA forums. It's got the full range between hobby actors and professionals. I've found the lion's share of my actors there and am VERY pleased with the overall quality of their work. (that's not saying everyone on VAA are skilled or will fit your project, you will definitely have to be sure to get a lot of auditions sent to you.)
Going all the way from hunting voice actors to actually receiving finished lines that you are satisfied with is a LONG journey though. I presume you don't have as much dialog to record as TJD, but still I'd like to warn you that the whole process takes a lot of time and you should really consider getting started as early as possible, to ensure you have time to really get what you are after.
Hope this rant somehow helps you in your quest. Best of luck!
