Ella's Progress over the years

I had been meaning to make something like this for quite a while, and I finally did-an Ella progress sheet!

Ella is my oldest Legend of Zelda oc, and she's also changed the most over the years-from being a horrific mary-sue to a better balanced character with a hopefully better story!

2010:
Ella was created this year-probably as early as January. I do have older sketches of her, but at the moment, they are in storage and I cannot access them ;w; The first drawings up there are doodles of her very first design done in Paint. I also did some very crappy traditional. Some of my oldest oldest watchers may recognize the drawings underneath the Paint crappyness-they're my very first Photoshop drawings! I was super bad at photoshop and switched to SAI only a few months after using it.
Speaking of super bad, Ella was HORRIBLE back then-a horrible horrible mary sue. I didn't know how to create characters that well back then, or write good stories, so she was overpowered as heck and basically took place in rewrites of the Zelda mangas XP My attitude was pretty bad then too-I was to proud to admit that she was a bad character and got myself into a TON of trouble for it. These bad memories still haunt me to this day DX

2011:
I started understanding just how bad Ella was then, and set out on a journey to change her for good. I tweaked her design numerous times, and thought up multiple stories that weren't rewrites, hoping to find one that would click. Her personality also got changed to something much less goody goody, and she became an angry grouch. Along with Ella's character and design improvement, my art skills and attitude changed too. I got better at anatomy and using SAI, and I became more open to change for Ella. After a while though, my other ocs called for development and Ella got laid off for a while. Oh sure, she was still there, but I was busy with other things, and she slowly became neglected.

2012:
I barely drew Ella at all this year. There were many reasons, but one of the biggest ones was her design-again. I suddenly found it hard to draw and began to avoid coloring and drawing her because of it. I was also scared that she would get called out for being a Mary sue again, even after all my work trying to fix that for good. So at that point, I knew that I would have to take a big step: completely overhaul Ella's design. Her designs have all been variations of the same ones pretty much, but this new one is vastly different, being non fancervicy, practical, pretty much covering all over. And I love it.

Ella Today:
Ella still does not get drawn much today, but I try and give her as much love as I can still. She's a dear character to me and she's a great way of showing my improvement over the years with art and character development. I was scared to change her at first, but I'm glad I took the steps to make her a better character. Someday, Ella will make a bigger comeback to my gallery, but for now, I keep her on the sidelines, still adored and loved dearly all the same.

So that's Ella's story basically ;w; I'm pretty proud of her improvement over the years. Even today, she isn't perfect, but she's come a long way in comparison to how she used to be. And meanwhile, to all those who have a very old oc, what is their story? And would you like to share it below?

Enjoy!