Edit

Final character

Third design:

Since I haven't designed a female character yet, I thought it'd be important to do that now. I wanted to explore what a female character would look like in this style, and add the points of her design to my cohesion guide.

I'm not going to go too deep into it, since my design process was not that different from the last step, and since I had a pretty fleshed out cohesion guide by this point, it was pretty quick and easy.

This design is based on Hecate, goddess of the moon, night, magic and witchcraft. I made her a goth girl and kept the theme of exposed skin going by giving her a short skirt, cropped sweater and deep neckline, but overall she's more covered than the other two. I wanted her to look a little intimidating so she has spiky hair and big stomping boots.

I also did the quick cohesion test with her below:

Most important rules for cohesion in this cast:

Symbol associated with the character must be plastered all over. = Moon.
Based on characters from Greek Mythology. = Hecate.
Every character has 2/3 main colors, apart from their base skin tone. = Purple and black.
Clearly defined zones of detail, 2/3 per character. = Boots, head, skirt.

I added new references to the moodboards and also added her unique features to the styleguide just like I did when I designed Hermes. I also added her to the character lineup on my main board.

Edit

It's important to not just edit your cohesion guide, but also your characters when you feel like they don't perfectly work together. I usually have reservations about editing my characters after I deem their design to be finished, but having a cohesion guide to help me edit them makes it easier to go back in and tweak the characters. As long as you've made your guide strong and thorough, you shouldn't have to make severe edits.

I feel like I designed my cast very cohesively, but the one thing I think I lost a bit is the angular shapes that are present in both Eros and Hecate, but not so much in Hermes. He feels a little bit too round and polished compared to the other two characters, so I'm going to edit his design to be a little more sharp.

It's a very subtle change but I do think it fixed the issues I had with the design.

The second change I made is to Hecate's height. Her spiky hair made her look as tall as Hermes, which I did not like. If you look at her design she actually is quite short but compensates for it by wearing big platforms and having high spiky hair, but it doesn't really come through as much in the first pass. I made her smaller so you can actually see she is compensating for her shortness.

First pass: Edited version:

"Final" cohesion guide

I mentioned in the beginning of the tutorial that this would be a living, evolving document, so it's a bit misleading to call this a finished cohesion guide, but I do want to stress the importance of knowing when to stop editing your cohesion guide.

I don't recommend changing your "most important rules" list on your main page, since it's supposed to be the foundation of all your characters, and changing it retrospectively might make the characters you designed before the change not fit in anymore.

You can always add more images and sources to your visual and narrative moodboards, the more the better, just make sure you don't lose the essence of cohesion between the images in your moodboards. The same with adding your new characters to the lineup, this doesn't compromise the essence of your cohesion guide, so add all of them if you want to.

The nature of milanote allows you to add and add, which might be very tempting, but just make sure to add things that are neccessary and apply to your whole cast.

Your cohesion guide is a success if you want to design a new character for your cast, and instantly get new ideas. You feel secure and safe, knowing you have a reliable document to refer to, a solid framework to place your characters into, a lineup to compare your new character to and a solid styleguide.

Here is my finished cohesion guide for reference:

https://app.milanote.com/1OLr6s1JdWh8aa?p=SA6pUIkB4Vg

Thank you so much for reading my tutorial, I hope you learned something useful and take these ideas into your future projects!

Guide skeleton: Finished guide:

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