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This part of the tutorial is dedicated to putting your guide to the test, but also editing it to either allow for more flexibility, or instead, make the rules more constraining. I will show you the second character I've designed for Pantheon and talk about the choices I've made while designing him, since I think that might be very helpful and you can interpret it in your own way, but I won't go into a detailed explanation of the drawing process.

The best way to test your cohesion guide is to try and design a new character.

It's smart to refer to the design patterns you've established earlier on, and use those to decide who your next character is going to be. For me the most important patterns I use are highlighted in yellow here.

Consideration:

Since the cast of Pantheon is based on Greek mythology, I can just look into my thematic inspirations board and find a list of all the Greek gods, making it very easy for me to get inspired for my new character design.

Some of the gods are less suitable for the Y2K aesthetic I established with the first design, like Demeter, goddess of harvest, since harvesting produce is not that relevant to the Y2K aesthetic.

That is why I look at gods like Hermes, messenger of the gods or Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty. Those concepts are a little easier to translate into the fashion-y street style aesthetic I've got going.

Decision:

After doing some more research, I decided on Hermes as the inspiration for my next design. He is usually depicted as a young athletic guy who is cunning and clever, often represented as a "trickster". He also has really recognisable iconography, the "talaria" or winged sandals, which he uses to travel around at high speeds.

His messenger god status could be translated in some cool accessories, and his trickster personality sets him up to be a good contrast to the more arrogant Eros design I already made.

Takeaway:

The process of deciding who your next character is going to be is made easier when you have a pre-defined framework to choose from, like Greek mythology or gemstones. If you don't have a framework to pick from however, you can still base your decision on things like personality types, colors, shapes etc.

Research

Base info:

Just like I did with Eros, I collected information that I could relate to the aesthetic of my cast, and filtered it into a few important points. Once again, this is on the main board of the cohesion guide, so make sure to put only the most essential and important information here.

You could make a separate board for every character displaying more detailed information about them, if you feel like it adds a lot, but I prefer to keep it simple and to the point.

One of my main design patterns is 2/3 main colors per character. I decided on a green and yellow color scheme. This is beacuse the meaning of those colors correlate with his personality, but also because they'd contrast nicely with Eros.

Another one of my important design patterns, the most important one in fact, is that every character has an iconic symbol plastered all over their design. Hermes has a lot of symbols associated with him, including the caduceus staff, the rooster, the herma and the satchel. The one he's most often associated with in recent pop culture however, is the Talaria, the winged golden sandals. Drawing a winged sandal all over his design would be hard to read, so I stripped it back to just a golden wing symbol.

At the bottom I like placing useful links to wikipedia pages etc. I can refer to these if I need some extra inspiration.

Takeaway:

Translate the information from your research into points that are actually relevant to the cohesion of your cast, instead of info dumping and cluttering up the page.

Design

While working on his design I referenced both the style guide I made earlier, but also took the aspects I found during my research that I thought would make for a cool design, and translated them through a Y2K lens.

Through drawing I also discovered things I hadn't initially thought to add to my cohesion guide, like the fact that each character could have a piece of jewelry or an accessory in the shape of their symbol that glows with energy. Eros has his heart ring, Hermes has his wing earrings. I thought this was a cool idea since it still offers a lot of diversity in the shape the accessory takes, but also binds the characters who posess one together.

I added a note to the Visual column on my main board called "important design features" for little things like the accessories that should be on each character. I also added a note to my style guide that provides info on how to draw the accessories and their glow.

Another interesting thing I realised during the drawing phase, is that I unconciously made Hermes half naked just like Eros. As the god of athletes I wanted to show off his physique but then I noticed that in all the ancient greek statues, the gods are depicted naked or almost naked. I decided to also incorporate this into my designs for this cast, making all of them pretty exposed, so I added it to my "important design features".

His first iteration had winged sneakers, but since he's the god of athletes and his talaria allow him to move around quickly in the myths, I thought it'd make more sense if they were rollerskates. I think its a good translation of the concept of his winged sandals into something more plausible in the real world, yet still pretty ethereal with the glowing symbols.

As he's always traveling outside I gave him more tanned skin, more muscular legs, less wise shoulders and I also made him taller than Eros just for the sake of diversity. I think using everything in my guide, I did a pretty good job in making them fit together, while also being different enough to be recognisable.

A simple way to check if your design is cohesive is by looking back at the most important rules on your main board and using it as a sort of checklist. Below is my checklist for Hermes.

Most important rules for cohesion in this cast:

Symbol associated with the character must be plastered all over. = Wing.
Based on characters from Greek Mythology. = Hermes.
Every character has 2/3 main colors, apart from their base skin tone. = Green and yellow.
Clearly defined zones of detail, 2/3 per character. = Rollerskates, face, chest.

To the left are some of the main inspirations I added to the moodboards when I was doing research. The moodboards are there to grow and evolve, so don't shy away from adding loads of new stuff with every character you design.

Style guide update:

I added examples of Hermes into the style guide to use as reference for later designs.

The more characters you create the more your style will be defined and eventually you'll have a long lineup of features that you can mix and match and edit to make new characters.

Big no's:

I also added a note of things that you should not do when designing for Pantheon. Things like:

Character can't have wings or tentacles etc., needs to be able to somewhat blend in with human society.
Can not look too ordinary, mustn't be mistaken for a normal human.

By now you should have 2 characters and a more thorough cohesion guide in Milanote. Two characters don't make a cast however, in my opinion a cast consists of at least 3 characters. I also made the mistake of designing 2 male presenting characters when it would have been smarter to design characters with different gender expressions.

On the next page I'll be designing a new character with a different gender expression, and adjusting my cohesion guide for that. I'll also be reworking some of the features of the other designs.

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