Busty Barrister - Day 36

The main character of this game is loosely based off my Aunt who is a barrister. She’s going to be mad if she ever finds out. I saw her for lunch today, and asked her a bunch of questions about the various courts in Hong Kong. She told me the district courts have open galleries so I can just go in and watch a case. She also told me that The High Court is used only when the penatly for a crime is expected to be greater than seven years.

Earlier this week I wrote a blog post where I listed out everything I need to do to complete level one of Busty Barrister Barbara. Let’s see what I got up to.

Hired Background Artists

First I spent ages trying to figure out my username and password on DeviantArt. Then I typed up a job ad and posted it.

Not that many people applied for the background artist job. I then typed up a specification for the backgrounds and grabbed some reference images online. I picked two people and got told them to create two backgrounds to start with as a test. Then I paid them deposits on PayPal.

Background image for the defense’s standing position in court.

Background image for the judge’s position in court. The “view angles” are low, which means the characters will have to be drawn looking down on the player. I don’t really want that. So I asked the artist to raise the camera to be eye level with the characters.

Hired Character Artists

I created a very similar job ad for character artists on deviant art. A lot of people applied. Spent a while looking through their galleries. Made a short list. Showed the applications to an artist friend. We agreed on who was good actually. This surprised me. Then I think I hired and sent deposits to three or four people.

Barbara clothing variation one.

Barbara clothing variation two.

Sundeep.

The character art is pretty good, but their faces don’t really look like the reference images. I need to give more reference images to the artists.

Finished Writing Level One

I’m getting more used to writing creatively. I used a few tricks to get myself to write more. The first was I set a timer for fifteen minutes and then opened up the Google Document. I then said “Do not alt tab out of this document for fifteen minutes”. Fifteen minutes doesn’t seem like a very long time, but it’s enough to get you in the mood of writing. Often the timer would go off and I’d keep writing.

The second trick was to break up the writing tasks into smaller tasks. This game is made up of various sections. Witness testimonies, case synopsis, presenting evidence, pressing witnesses and other stuff. Instead of tasks like “Write for fiteen minutes”, I created tasks like “Write press cases for Jared Testimony #3” or “Change the old man character to a prostitute called Audrey”.

Created Casting Call for Voice Actors

Created a casting call on Casting Call Club. It has been seven years since I have last used the website. It has changed a little bit. The UI design is really strange over there. Also my post didn’t get much attention so I paid $30 for a Business Account so that I could feature my Casting Call.

Still not that many people have submitted auditions. Probably because it’s Christmas and also the voice requirements might be too difficult. I might simplify them in a day or two if I can’t get some of these parts cast.

Adding High Level Tasks

I forgot about music and sound effects! I’m not sure where to hire musicians, but maybe Upwork is a good place to start. Also I should start tracking costs in a Google Sheet. Mentally I’ve set aside quite a lot of money for this game, but still it’s good to track costs. Otherwise it’s a pain to track payments to artists. “Have I paid this guy a deposit yet?”.

High Level Tasks

[x] Hire a background artist
[x] Hire a character artist
[x] Finish writing level one
[ ] Hire character animators
[ ] Hire voice actors
[ ] Specify background art
[ ] Specify character art
[ ] Code links between scenes
[ ] Code press testimony function
[ ] Code present evidence function
[ ] Enter data for level one
[ ] Create a cost document
[ ] Hire a musician and sound effects person