Am I alone here?

[esquarecomics]

This is gonna be strange and oddly specific but are you or anyone you know one of those people that have carried a story idea or a character since your childhood?

If you're one of those people have you executed that story or materialized that character in a visual format?

Did it meet your expectations when you finally finished your story?

Did the reception of the story or character meet your expectations?

If your idea is a character, do you have a story centered around them, are they your avatar or something else?

Also, feel free to tell us about your character/story in the comments

[andrew17]

Smith was the cat next door when i was 11 years old.

i started making comics about him when I was still at school, drawing one a day to see if I could do it. That would be in the learly 80s.

Fast forward to 2010 - I've done my stint writing comics for the newspapers and want to start drawing again. Smith politely claws at my trouser leg and asks for attention.

Twelve years later and nearly 1,700 comics on, here we are...

Read Smith | Tapas Web Comics

[powerplantanimations]

Haha I know wha you're saying.

I have more from Quincy's universe that I plan on showing-up. I've been writing his story since I was FIFTEEN. I'm twenty-three now. I was 18 for the Red Giantess.

My readers say they love Quincy's inclusion. The Red Giantess I CANNOT wait for people to learn more about her. I love playing around with her design since I've secretly wanted to be a fashion designer, so she's sorta been my creative outlet up in that front. :v

Read That Stick Figure Isekai | Tapas Web Comics

[ButterflyEmpress]

I had some ideas for magical girl series since I was in 5th grade and redesigned the characters over the years. I've always wanted them to be animated, but realistically have to settle for webtoon. But now I'm not sure if they are worth executing since magical girl has always been a niche genre and it's practically dead now

[DNoble]

I have abandoned most of my ideas from childhood, potentially to be dusted off later and re-examined. Certain elements from earlier stories have made it into current ones.
That said, you're in good company here: Eichiro Oda, author of One Piece, apparently drew characters from it in his middle school notebooks. He started crafting the most popular manga of all time when he was like 11, and has stuck to his guns ever since.

[TheSingularitySeed]

I've been technically writing in the same universe since I was 4.
Obviously it's a lot different now but it's all loosely connected to this one original story about these armoured flowers that could hop between worlds. The original setup made it so that I never had to leave my little bouquet of warriors lol

The comic I do now is based on a piece of background lore from that story that I had to rework a LOT

I always did these stories for myself so I didn't have many expectations. I'm happy with where I am with it.

But I think my child self would be sad the characters are no longer flower/people hybrids which uprooted a lot of worldbuilding.

[grantingtherant]

I came up with concept for The Middle - my webcomic about three girls in a rock band - in high school and kept doodling them between classes. I kept this up in college, though I will admit I tried abandoning the idea a few times because I realized how inexperienced I was making comics. Yet, I never truly abandoned them because they kept coming back to me. I finally decided that after I finished college, I would actually publish the comic for real and start to gain momentum. The first few chapters are rough, but I feel like it was necessary for me to put The Middle out there.

As for expectations? Well, taking creative writing classes and pitching the characters, I realized that I had developed the characters so much in my head but never on paper. Initial reception was lukewarm, but it's been gaining traction as I've been improving my craft

I've pruned away many ideas over the years but Whitney, Gwen, and Fiona have been the main constants throughout my creative lifetime

Oh and you can read it here

Read The Middle | Tapas Web Comics

[crimson_mystery_cake]

the main series i am currently working on is something that i started working on when i was 14/15 years old. i am 26 now. im including concepts and ideas into this story that i have had since i was in middle school. the main concept and main plotline of this story hasnt really changed since i was in high school, ive mostly just added small bits and pieces here and there over the years.

ive started and restarted the initial chapter so many times now lol. ive come up with a lot of projects that ive dropped, reworked, and just completely forgot about, but no matter what the story im working on now has stuck with me. i feel like you know you have something special when even after so much time it feels like the story is never boring and there’s always something new to discover or come up with. it is a truly special project to me, and im so excited to share it with the world. i actually technically have the first chapter done too, but i realized it took a long time to color so im going to mess around with a simpler art style before i post anything.

[TheLemmaLlama]

i feel like you know you have something special when even after so much time it feels like the story is never boring and there’s always something new to discover or come up with.

Oh absolutely.

... which means I probably didn't come up with anything special during my childhood because while one of my current projects does technically draw its lineage to my earliest (serious) story idea, it's evolved so much by now it has literally nothing in common with it XD

[crimson_mystery_cake]

i mean somee ideas are minted upon conception and others need to be fleshed out more before theyre ready. weve all got our own journey to take and thats what makes storycrafting fun.

[tori_candraw]

I never had my own idea really. But whenever I read fanfics as a kid, I always wanted to write and tell stories. I always felt that I could do a good job and try to make better content than the ones I read. The stuff I read were always too mushy and without substance XD

[Illo]

That's a very good question! I myself had a characters that I created while I was 8, it was very inspired from dragon ball (I watched the original and moved to Z) I still haven't made a novel about him yet but I probably will in the future because I always wanted to try and see how far I can take a stupid idea I had as a child

His name was Strig Gahame and his power was simply strength, flight and other dragon ball-like powers, I have a story in mind about him but I will probably won't release it until I finish with my other novels, making this many novels weekly will destroy

[SamAndFriends]

I got the idea for a children fantasy book when I was 8 years old out of a game I played with my brother.
I started to write and plot the story then. But I had large gaps where I put it away for months or years and came back to it later.
Getting older I re-wrote what I had many times or changed the plot. It was helping to talk about the plot with different people who got me new ideas for a smooth and exciting story line.
Two years ago I finished it, started to draw my own pictures for it and gave it a handfull people to read. It was super difficoult for me to draw the characters the way I imagined them in my head. I even changed the look of the antagonist bc my original picture from when I was 12 seemed to horrifying for a children book...

I know it's gonna take some more resting and changing the latest parts till I feel like printing it.

[system]

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