The Antagonists

Hiya everyone! Welcome back!

So, I did a ten facts list on the three main characters the last few weeks. Today, I thought I would talk a little about the main antagonistic force in Dreamwalkers, which I had mentioned briefly in past posts. The antagonists are referred to as the Onreios.

The word 'Onreios' is actually from the Greek mythological entities referred to as 'Onreioi'. In the Greek mythology, the Onreioi are the offspring of the goddess of night, Nyx, and the siblings of Thanatos (god of death), Hypnos (god of sleep) and Geras (god of old age). They were said to be the personification of dreams and took the appearance of black winged daemons. These came to be the inspiration of the Onreios, who are beings that are the personification of monstrous nightmares that the S.O.S team have to hunt down within the dreamscape. The name also comes from the word Onreiology, which is another word for Dreamology.

Here are a few of my initial concepts for the Onreios:

I had planned for the Onreios to come in different shapes and sizes, depending on things people might fear, so I practiced with a lot of different sketches, some of which might even be used in a fashion later on. Things that look shadow, unnatural and out of place certainly seemed fitting. A style I chose for the final design of the Onreios that appear in the first chapter I decided to look into more human-like features, such as a humanoid skull-like face, but warped and changed. Something I found was that the closer things look to human, the more unnatural they can sometimes appear. Of course, the additional features added to it also help too. Still, if only to make it interesting, each Onreios that appear in each cake will be unique in their own ways.

I'm considering at the end of each case doing a little Onreios file at the end, giving a bit of information about the creature involved with the case.

There is more involved where the Onreios are concerned, including a ranking system, hierarchy and more, but as it's not yet appeared in the comic itself, I'll bring up that at a later time. Something to look forwards to as the team and the readers learn more themselves. Still, there is a lot of info on the Onreioi online, if anyone wants more information on the inspiration for the Onreios. It is an interesting read, since they aren't the most well known of Greek myths.

I'll very likely make more concepts for different Onreios as the series goes on, so keep an eye out for those too :)

Until next time!

Tara