Framework

I believe it's very important to be organised when making art. It helps get ideas out of your mind and onto the screen, and makes it easier to jump back into a project after you've taken a break. Being organised also helps convey your ideas to other people, like a team you might be working in, or people you want to ask for feedback.

For this tutorial, we'll be using Milanote. It's extremely easy to learn and works wonders for people who like to visualize their thought process. It can also be worked on by multiple people at the same time, which makes it very relevant for team settings.

In this step we'll make a simple framework that we'll use to throughout the tutorial, we'll keep adding and building on it so it has to accomodate for expansion. Milanote is perfect for this, as it's extremely flexible and basically works like a whiteboard.

Basics of cohesion guide.

So to begin, let's break down what needs to be in the basic skeleton of any cohesion guide:

• A place to write down the most important rules you'll need to follow, this should be visible on your main page.

• A lineup of the characters you have so far, this way you can see them next to each other and judge if they're cohesive.

• A place to store moodboards and links to visual inspirations.

• A styleguide.

• A place to store narrative inspirations and information.

• An extras tab where you can store things that don't fit in anywhere else.

In Milanote you usually start with a big empty canvas, but I've made a base document for you to look through and use as inspiration.

You can look at it here: https://app.milanote.com/1OLNMh1WAEZv7Q?p=lfVAJDWzE6z

I made sure to put the most important information on the main page, so it's immediately visible to you when you're designing your cast. The more detailed information is filed away in different columns and boards withing those columns.

Since I separated the principles into 2 groups on the last page, we're also going to do that while making our guide skeleton. I recommend using the column tool to keep everything organised. Below a simplified version of the contents of the Milanote board.

You can decide for yourself how you want to arrange everything of course, but I think it's important to have a system to stick to, so it's useful for others as well as for yourself.

At this point it may not look like much yet, but keep in mind that this document will grow and evolve with every design choice that you make, every character you design and every new source of inspiration you find.