Old work that ... you're proud of?

[liaroger]

These super old character designs from early 2020. I'd just started doikg digital art and barely had any pen control and didn't know anything about the program I was using.

These drawings I did about a month later.

And this page I made in... I want to say mid to late 2020?

I didn't know what I was doing. But I did okay.

[TheLemmaLlama]

The simple setup of the protagonist climbing this big tower to see the sun while bickering with her friend on the way works really well and contrasts the really quite dark implications of this sci-fi setting where nobody ever sees the sun. It's definitely one of the tightest short comics I've ever made, and I feel like it solidified a lot of what would become the hallmarks of my art and writing style.

That's a cool premise! In what way was it tight? Did their conversation have an influence on the protagonist getting past the clouds, or was it for dramatic contrast, or is it just some charming banter happening in parallel? (I guess I'm especially interested in people's old writing, moreso than art )

@smokesalty You have mini-comics ... related to The Commune? Excuse me while I go search for your Instagram XD

[igneriss]

Oh, I actually have quite a lot. I consider my highschool days (and early uni) the best in terms of creativity and drawings, then there was only a regression cx I started working on improving my arts few years ago and it shows, but I still think that some of my arts from 10 years ago were just as good as my current ones, if not better and my coloured pencils game was strong, nowadays I draw almost only digitaly :c (excluding comics)

2012

2014

[darthmongoose]

That's a cool premise! In what way was it tight? Did their conversation have an influence on the protagonist getting past the clouds, or was it for dramatic contrast, or is it just some charming banter happening in parallel? (I guess I'm especially interested in people's old writing, moreso than art )

Hahaha, it's sort of both. You know what, here's the whole comic.

The entire 8 page comic is under here

It's not as tight as my current work. Like Errant definitely has stronger setup and payoff than this (which is why Errant readers have fun theorising; there's almost never a detail in Errant that isn't relevant later), but it was kind of the comic where I stopped just haphazardly putting stuff into a comic like "this happens, then this happens, then this happens" or adding characters and scenes mostly just because it seemed cool, and moved towards this much more deliberate approach to writing like "this is like this, so that this payoff can happen later". Being limited by the competition rules to 6-10 pages really forced me to cut everything that wasn't doing something, and to come up with novel solutions like "wait, how is she on the phone in a way where we see the friend visually while climbing???" which resulted in "Hologram projecting helicopter phone!" (worth noting, this was 2009, before drones were common, a drone would be an obvious solution now ).

I remember one of the judge comments that caused the comic to get marked down and place in 9th rather than higher was that they didn't like the ending. They thought that if the reader got to see the sun, it'd be stronger, which was something I have always staunchly disagreed with. The experience of seeing the sun is an intensely profound, spiritual experience that a drawing of a white circle couldn't capture. To me, the fact that the experience is so amazing that it can't be described and all the protagonist can say is something quite banal is important. So it also kind of helped me cement "what is my writing style?" and "Where am I willing to compromise and where do I stick to my convictions?" Some people agree with the judges, while others agree with me on this one

[RedLenai]

I believe I did this back when I was in High-School... I recall I was 15 when I did it so... 8 years ago!
I still have the traditional drawing done in A4 with stylograps despite the paper is not white anymore, it turned yellow!
The only thing I did was scan it, put a digital texture filter on it and my watermark c:

I recall it took me around 3 days to do it, this amount of detail has never been achieved ever since haha

[TheLemmaLlama]

Ooh we get to see the whole thing? Thank! I also think the way you portrayed the sun here gives more of a profound, spiritual feeling. Alternately, I think it would also work if you had the most mundane-looking white circle ever and have the characters be all amazed while the audience is like ... it's just a sun :'D I probably would've made a valiant but unsuccessful attempt to draw an awesome-looking sun and end up with the worst of both worlds XD

[smokesalty]

@smokesalty You have mini-comics ... related to The Commune? Excuse me while I go search for your Instagram XD

Yeah! I was trying to figure out an artstyle for the comic at the time, so I'd make a bunch of mini comics to introduce a couple concepts (that being said a couple of them are very expositionyy and there are things that got changed for the comic!)

[NickRowler]

I might be in the unpopular opinion but I don't really hate my art from my teen years. Maybe because my old stuff from that time has this sweet charm to it.
This is from 2007

My stuff from my middle college years however was ugly and I hate most of it. I was super depressed and I would draw people really ugly. But at the end of my college years, I feel like my art sort of corrected back into something nicer.
This is something I made for my cartooning class in 2013

And this is a page from Brother Butterfly from 2014

[TheLemmaLlama]

Crunchy flags, of course!

[R.n.P]

from my first episode

Read The Rolling Stone | Tapas Web Comics

[AlydaB]

This was the very first digital art I ever created, much inspired by the background art of the epic music videos I was obsessed with at the time (see Jennyni20 (epic music) on youtube). I was an 11 year old with access to only a mouse and MS paint, so that's what I used to doodle and this was one of many lovely, wonkily-proportioned byproducts :]

It's not good. I don't like it as an artwork, but I guess I'm proud of how uninhibited and carefree I was with my art at the time. Digital art was a new, exciting outlet for my creativity and nothing more, while nowadays it's become a bit of an obligation- fun work, but work.

I drew what I wanted, in order to explore the stories and fantasies I liked, and did it only for myself and my own fun. I had never been in any online artist/writer community and didn't know they existed, so there was no sense of pressure, competition, expectation, or outside influence beyond the artworks I saw on youtube- whose creators were unknown to me. As a result, I think my childhood drawings had an element of unbounded creativity that isn't as present in my recent artworks.

Despite being objectively bad, I remember how much fun I had making them, so they don't make me cringe (much) haha

My first draft of 'The Herald's Soul' on the other hand... oof. That will never see daylight again.

[UrMom]

I have a lot of old stuff I'm still satisfied with. For space I'll put them all under spoilers because I have a whole timeline.

v This was from when I was around 15. It's pretty fugly, but this was my first ever attempt at doing a full-ish background with perspective. Ironically I didn't use perspective lines because I hated using rulers at the time, in spite of how weird it looks I'm still happy with myself for even tackling it. At the time most of my drawings were OCs on in a white void.

Blip

v These were from when I was 17, I started really getting into clothes details and experimenting with angles. These particular ones I'm still pretty happy about, the first drawing was my first attempt at an over-head angle, it's not perfect but I still like the exaggeration in it. Plus it's better than I tried than never did it.
The second one was drawn on a q-card, and I put A LOT of work into that dress, making the fluff and ruffles to the right volume. Still like the dress in general, it would be a cool thing to make for a Renaissance Festival.
The last one was also on a q-card, and was the first time I tried layering with paint. Went out of my way to buy a small tube a white paint just so I can experiment with these cold weather puffs, I also use a dip pen with silver ink, which didn't really turn out, but it's the thought that counts.

Blip

v 18-19 was when I had the most fun. My style has this really sudden shift, and I started going nuts with what I could draw, so there is a bit of variety in this. The first drawing in particular was the first one I made with the new style change (You can see the pattern going on here.), and while it lost me all my followers on DA, I never went back. Either way these are all my favorites that I'm still really happy about.

Blip

v These were when I was 20. I don't have a whole lot I like from this time, but these are the few I still happy with.

Blip

v 21, 22, 24 and 25 in that order. The last one is a sketch of my grandpa so of course I'd be happy with it, even if he was in the hospital at the time.

One drawing has gore.

I have more, but they're pretty close to my current style so I'll just consider them "present" stuff. Sorry for the dump, I like to keep as many of my old drawings as I can just for archive purposes. Also even if they're old and kinda fugly I still put a lot of time and effort into them, it wouldn't feel right to dump them, I still even have drawings from preschool because of that. It's funny how a lot of the stuff I'm "proud" of are firsts of something, it's thanks to a lot of these old drawings that I'm where I'm at now. Sure, I could have gone to school and gotten even better with proper training, but for someone doing everything on their own with help from a tutorial here and there, I'm pretty satisfied with where I'm at.

[TheLemmaLlama]

Also even if they're old and kinda fugly I still put a lot of time and effort into them, it wouldn't feel right to dump them

Not just that, but people who are invested in your current work often have an interest in your history as a developing artist (and writer!) (I totally did not have any ulterior motives for making this thread )

So ...

My first draft of 'The Herald's Soul' on the other hand... oof. That will never see daylight again.

... are you ... are you sure? T_T

(I for one have left every single piece of work I've uploaded on the internet exactly where they are, and never plan to delete them >:D)

[nekocoa]

This piece is almost 3 years old and it's still one of my favorites

[Mar_Sadeh]

Some years ago I wrote a Vocaloids fanfiction, in which Hatsune Miku discovers the wonders of heavy metal. I think I was 15. The crux of the joke is that everything I knew about the Vocaloids I gathered from watching two music videos and doing about an hour of online searches, so I basically just made it up as I went along having no context except for character names. At some point a dragon woman attacked Hatsune Miku mid-concert, a heavy metal vocaloid I made up named after a Japanese rifle turned into a shotgun, and there was an epic battle while Miku sang Through the Fire and Flames by Dragonforce. With some work I could probably track it down - right now I think the only copy is lost in the annals of Deviantart.

The result was not exactly phenomenal, but honestly I think it overall still holds up as an absurd, goofy sort of way. It was my first love letter to heavy metal, a genre that became very important to me over the years, and so it holds a special place in my heart.

[TheLemmaLlama]

Bold move! What kind of reactions did you get from Vocaloid fans who actually knew Vocaloid? XD (And do you still at least remember your deviantART username? :P)

I also have and old piece of writing on the goofier side I'm still quite proud of, but I've already posted quite a bit of stuff in the OP and I was more interested in hearing about works with a blend of story and visuals so I kept this one out

[SpavVy]

Here's some of my old art that I'm still happy with. Anything before 2019 I usually hate looking at with a burning passion but around 2019 or so I had a huge jump in improvement because I was experimenting a lot more with styles along with honing my main style. The art I did of Haru from Beastars ended up becoming my second style though I don't use it a whole lot unless a commissioner requests it.

[Mar_Sadeh]

It remained very obscure, so I didn't get much reaction from the community writ large. However, one Vocaloid fan did find it, about 6 months after its initial publishing. Their response - and no, this is not a joke - was to congratulate me on my impressively deep knowledge of the Vocaloids because I knew of obscure characters.

A bit of asking later, I gathered this is because of a single line that offhandedly referenced Calne Ca, a Vocaloid who looks like Hatsune Miku mixed with a giant spider. I just happened to stumble across her while doing my hour of online searches, and having already decided on the dragon woman as the main antagonist but thinking that Miku but a spider sounded metal and I wanted that, I just threw in a reference that the dragon was sent by Calne Ca. This doubled as potential sequel fodder, so I could go through other characters sent by Calne Ca as Miku learns about more and different subtypes of metal with her new friend, perhaps culminating in a fight against Calne Ca herself. Those sequels never materialized, though I have considered going back just for fun, or rewriting it to be original characters only. Whatever the case, the irony of someone finding my knowledge of the characters to be particularly extensive was not lost on me.

I do remember my DeviantArt username! In fact, with knowing it I just found the story inside a few seconds. I'm... nervous to put a link to it, since that would enable looking at other parts of my DeviantArt account and I don't want that to happen. If you are super interested, let me know and I will DM you a file (not that that makes it especially hard to find the original document by doing a text search but it makes me feel better XD).

[TheLemmaLlama]

That's hilarious, yet something I'd totally do when encountering fan content for stuff I'm into XD

I'm not a Vocaloid fan so I probably won't get it, though it'll be cool to contribute any quotes you're particularly proud of that you feel like anyone could appreciate

[AlydaB]

... are you ... are you sure? T_T

Luckily, I never uploaded them anywhere in the first place, so yup

I might share snips of it someday just for the fun at laughing at an old, crappy original and seeing how much it's grown, but it really is pretty bad haha