Your first darling?

[zelkats]

I think my first darling is "Crimson90"

It's a story I created when I was 14/15. It's probably the story I was most passionate about. I drew so many illustrations for it, rebooted and revamped the comic a number of times. It was an ambitious story but at age 15, my artistic skills weren't good enough to create what I thought Crimson90 deserved.

The cover, made when I was 15.

It's about a girl, Elizabeth trapped in a cursed book she intended to write her fiction in and lives through it as a main character of a story that writes itself in the book, via her mind and heart. Her step-brother reads it to the end, hoping that Elizabeth wakes from her vegetative state once it's done.

Her story takes place in a fantastic world (many of my inspirations come from King of Bandits Jing) where no humans dwell, only fae and human-looking puppets created by the fae's magic. Elizabeth wakes up as an unused, abandoned puppet in a museum tower. She encounters a guy puppet, named Quartz (who represents her estranged father) who wakes up as well. They weren't meant to be awake, or alive. So they escaped while the fae hunted them down, and ventured through the world, in search for the flying Red City, where Quartz was banished from. He hopes to find his true love there, Amber (who represents Elizabeth's dead mother). This story was Elizabeth's way of escaping from life. Puppets were like people who are like empty shells, searching for something dear to fill themselves with.

Quartz and Amber.

I was in love with this story for years, but I felt like I could never do it justice. I kept improving and changing it, I even changed costume designs so many times:

3rd or 4th design, when I was 16.

another, when I was 17.

Crimson was never truly started or done, but I always fantasised working on it. Even designed several web designs for it lol:

I guess I kind of gave up on it after years passed and it doesn't seem so original anymore. I started seeing so many other movies and animations doing the stuff I wanted to do for Crimson90, and so much better, lol.

I guess the only thing about it that was done was the one-shot spin-off called, "Puppet Eyes" (about Quartz and Amber) which I made for a comic competition. I won a prize and an editor offered to help make something out of my work, but I never took the chance. Perhaps it's a mistake I should learn from XD

Sorry for the long-ass post. I guess it was an excuse for me to recollect.

[Thesleepypencil]

My first darling is really OLD. Old enough it could have a licence and drive.

I made the first story in grade 3 about a girl who fell into a river and found herself in another world and she stole from a witch, she ended also befriending a talking cat.

so from grade 3 to the begining of college i added more stories. As i grew up this girl grew up. Because of her stealing from the witch she had a permanent connection to that world and could be summoned by the royal family to help them. And unfortunately sometimes that world would seep into hers

It's never been well written. The last stories where she is in college make the most sense. And I'd never actually try to turn it into something but it's just a nice daydream.

[ERossUra]

I've been writing for as long as I can remember, and my "big works" (stuff that I spent a lot of time on, not necessarily good) I remember pretty well. But I've definitely shed them and moved on. It didn't take very long for me to recognize their inadequacies. I took a break from writing for a while to focus on music, but in my last year at university, I started writing comics seriously. I had a lot of 4-page Future Shocks type stories, many of which I still think are pretty good but have never gotten around to drawing. Then there's my graphic novel.

What started as a series of short stories about a badass viking lady out to atone for a youth spent in mindless violence gradually developed into an over 200 page saga. After the first draft of it was complete (with each chapter being edited and reviewed by a trusted college), it basically got shelved. I still think about it constantly and intend to come back and do a complete rewrite. But whenever I think about the daunting size of that task and remember all the time spent on my current ongoing comics (5 x 3 and Buy/Sell/Exit) I just cringe and go back to day dreaming about it.

I don't know whether I should let it go or commit to it. In hindsight, in needs a lot of reworking to be a thrilling and coherent narrative throughout, but I think my writing skill has developed to the point where I'm really ready to tackle it.

[konori]

I have stories which I've let go, but there are some which I still hold on to... When I was in high school (at the height of my anime fandom), I wrote so many fantasy adventure stories. I was influenced by CLAMP and the Lunar JRPG series where you'd get several stories taking place in the same world except that these stories take place hundreds or thousands of years apart. I had 2 or 3 such worlds, each with their own magic systems and lore and stuff. Ahh, I was so ambitious back then. (Nowadays I write shorter stories because they take less time to complete and I can move on to other things.)

I haven't looked at those stories in a very long time but I still have not let them go. I intend to rewrite them someday, since my writing style has changed and I have to get rid of some of the outdated, naive ideas of my high school self. XD;;

[ERossUra]

I had 2 or 3 such worlds, each with their own magic systems and lore and stuff. Ahh, I was so ambitious back then.

My world building used to be so so thorough. I still do it from time to time, but more related to when I'm planning a D&D adventure. Even my "darling" had a pretty simple, based on the real world, setting. My problem is I get caught up in world building and lose the energy to actually tell the dang story.

[dglisson]

OK, time for my own confessional: my very first comic, when I was in high school and drawn on NOTEBOOK PAPER during class (seriously) was about a superhero named (I'm not kidding you) Punk Spike. He was punk because he had a Mohawk (I guess) and his power was that he could make spikes out of his skin and shoot them at you.

If this sounds ridiculous, on some level it was meant to be. As a kid I was kind of a "Weird Al" type, always coming up with parodic song lyrics and the like, so Punk Spike actually started as a parody of the superhero comics I was reading, basically borderline ridiculous and making fun of tropes (not that I called them that at the time) that I saw there. The villains were similarly ridiculous ("Mammoth", a sumo wrestler whose nose had been stretched into an elephant trunk) and it had a lot of really bad jokes.

The problem began about two years in (YES two years) and I had been drawing Punk Spike so long that I actually really liked him as a person. Some of you who have attempted satire knows what happens when you actually LIKE your hero, well guess what, you start to take him seriously. Which meant that my storylines stopped being parodies and were actual attempts to have regular superhero stuff happen to him, WITH the same stupid cast of characters I was now also taking seriously, and STILL drawing the damn thing on notebook paper for countless hours (who could afford a scanner back then?). So yeah, I ended up falling victim to the same tropes I was parodying. I didn't stop drawing him until my first year of college.

The terrible thing about this is that not only was this comic ridiculous, it made me feel ridiculous for working on it. So when I put it away, it wasn't for a better comic book idea, even though my art had been improving--it was a whole, "Now it's time to write some serious stuff, get into novels and get away from this comic business". As a result, I dropped my art altogether when in reality, I should have been spending more time on it to get better. I had to wait almost 20 years to get back into drawing. Sigh.

[ERossUra]

Well, I for one am glad you're back to doing comics. We all have our notebook paper comics somewhere. I started out selling $0.25 comics at my elementary school about an alien bounty hunter who protected the earth from other aliens. There was really no bounty hunting involved actually, come to think of it. Although, I think the police chief paid him for his work so maybe technically?

[69Michi]

I feel like my first darling probably would be http://fav.me/d7q0mhv, well both of them really LMFAO but more or less the blue hair in the bottom. He was probably my first OC when I first joined the RP world and even though he had a few flaws here and there, I couldn't find myself replacing him with any other character. He is still up there in my favorite list even though I no longer use him... Also deep inside I feel like my main character Noah in :Rebirth is a somewhat reflection of Anon LMFAO mostly personality wise for their calm and collective manner most of the time. Also maybe for being megane

[konori]

My problem is I get caught up in world building and lose the energy to actually tell the dang story.

Ahahah, the same thing happens to me too (even recently)! By the time I'm done with the world-building, my creative juices have drained and I'm too tired to write the damn story. XD;;;

[joannekwan]

My first two real darlings were these guys.

(Jeez my art's improved. This is from 2012)

They were the main characters of the first serious story I ever conceived. I did a lot of world-building, creating a map, making up city names, random businesses, even a national sport. It's pretty bad though, lots of loose ends, lots of angsty stuff (this was when I was really into BL, LOL). Their characters are somewhat problematic as well in hindsight. The left is a whiny little bitch, and the right is a jackass who can't express his feelings constructively. I still like the story but it would need some major rewrites if I were to touch it again.

[alaingrey]

My first story ever was a Dadaist Legally Blonde meets the Mighty Boosh kind of mess about two 'dumb blondes' named Daphne and Shirley. Daphne was a hand model and a witch and had aspirations to be a runway model, and Shirley was born from an oyster named Mother of Pearl. I think she worked as a concessions stand worker in a movie theater and thought that she was going to make it big in Hollywood by getting scouted? I don't have any idea.

Anyway the story was pretty much a non-story and was written in a binder that I'd take turns working on with my sister. We had an idea it would be an illuminated manuscript, a la Book of Kells. Except about two superficial dumb people. There was some part about saving the gorillas and Greenpeace and other than that I pretty much don't remember. The Beatles may have been involved? Because I loved the Beatles?

My second darling is a comic that I started two years ago and lost when my hard drive got wiped and I didn't have a backup B") I miss it, but I just can't go back because I'm still broken over it. It was a cyberpunk ish story about a quadraplegic dictator who wanted to make everyone live in the Matrix, but didn't want to ask for anyone's consent first. Some day... I'll write it.

[Sanz]

Loo my fisrt darling was a magic girl fantasy comic called Cherry Blossoms (the big reason i fear picking this genre up again because it was so freaking awful i felt bad for the characters i created....because they were stucknin this awful story lmao) And another called cooper heads....and was suppose to be copper heads but i spelled ot wrong on every cover and just kept it lol. Which i took three characters from it. Revamped them completely and created Los Esmeraldas with one main.

[miseryhunting]

Oh man, oh MAN, when I was 13 I wrote a 5 volume series about a boy with mystical powers too dangerous for him to contain, so everyone in the magical community wanted to either use him or kill him.
It had all the horrible cliches including but not limited to: feisty female best friend, later love-interest, amnesia after car accident, dead parents, family drama and tragic backstories and like, I loved this project. I got to love all the characters and be proud of their growth and it took me 10 years to decide that maybe it's better to stay put on my shelf.
I still love it and I feel like the main character is someone I could fundamentally relate to, but I'm in peace with the fact it's a story for me to enjoy only.

[miseryhunting]

@Chopythes, do you have it somewhere on the internet? It actually sounds like something I might enjoy.

[4threset]

My first was a story about a chinese community that built their city in rainforest treetops. I let it go because i realized it was more aesthetically pleasing than story driven.. _(:'3 Most of my plot revolved around exploring the world itself than being something actually engaging so i scrapped it.
I'm working on more doable things now haha

[WhatAHero]

One of three comic concepts I was gonna produce for Tapastic but eventually rejected in favor of rebooting a different one.
It was called Grave of Heroes and revolved around a Frankenstein girl with lightning powers teaming up with an undead Mafia boss to take down Six Great Heroes that were corrupted by an unknown evil.

[Chopythes]

Wow, I really love reading all your darling ideas, it's awesome!
I think it's very inspirational<3

@Chopythes, do you have it somewhere on the internet? It actually sounds like something I might enjoy.

It was in Swedish unfortunately D:
And I never posted it anywhere as I was afraid that someone would hijack the idea (wow... xD).

[Shanny8]

Ugh...I'm gonna most likely die for this. My first I guess "darling" was a comic I made back in 6th grade called the Trans Mutants(based off my love for the X-Men). Not going into details & particulars, but I drew this notebook comic(an actual issue was about 8 pages on really good days, 6 pages if I didnt have much to draw...MORE if I had an all out epic battle issue) for the greater part throughout my high school years, and basically until I went to art school.

I still want to revise the characters and stuff, but a lot of it(mainly the writing) is corny as hell now that I think back. However I have slowly began sliding a few those side characters into works that I am doing now. One of those characters name was Lady Blue, a government agent- who will be showing up in the pages of Ray Thunder(soon). I'm in the process of developing a story for her own mini- series.

[indagold]

That's really complicated for me honestly... I never get too obsessed with my work but also never forget about it. Honestly the only thing I trashed was my fandom phase at age 13. I went from imagining great epic original stories to making goddam zelda mary sues. I never wrote a fanfic again since then. Thank god!

It's funny...I rewrote a story I made when I was 11 for my BFA senior animation thesis and it won an award .-.

[tomatobird]

That... is a BEAUTIFUL site though!!! And great costume designs, at at 15-17?? wow. haha even if it didn't come to fruition im sure it was quite an experience and informed your later work as well!