Dream Mythology: Sandman

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

There are quite a lot of mythologies about dreams and nightmares, though other than a select few, dream mythology, I find, is not the most talked mythology. Well, other than a few select ones. So, for some of my posts, especially while my wrists are still suffering and needing bracing more often than not, I thought I would discuss some mythologies about dreams that I both found interesting, or helped to inspire the story behind Dreamwalkers.

To help to start our mythology journey, I thought we'll start of with one of the most well known dream related mythology. We'll be going into some more obscure ones as we go along.

So, as you will probably know by now, one of the most well known mythologies or folktales about dreams or nightmares comes in the form of the Sandman.

So, other than the character that has that name on the film 'Rise of the Guardians', what is the mythology of the Sandman?

Well, the Sandman originates from Scandinavian folklore, where the sandman, by scattering a fine, magic sand into the eyes, will grant good dreams to children. It was thought that the sleep grit (scientifically referred to as Rheum) that one sometimes get after waking is actually the residue of the Sandman's sand from that night.

As mentioned, if one has watched Rise of the Guardians, 'Sandy', of course, is based on this mythology.

There have been other characters and folklores made that have referenced the Sandman, or have adapted it in some way. In 1841, a folktale was written by Hans Christian Anderson called 'Ole Lukøje', which told the tale of a Sandman like figure of the same name, who would visit children and, for good children, would spread a magical umbrella over them, which has pictures on the inside. These pictures would give the good children wonderful dreams. To bad children, he would spread a second umbrella, which had no pictures on the inside, and those children would sleep heavily, experiencing no dreams. In that tale, it is discovered that he is a dream god and the brother to Death, who is also known as Ole Lukøje. The Death version closes the eyes of those he visits to take them away.

Likewise, the Scottish nursery rhyme of Wee Willie Winkie also appears to be about the personification of sleep, though he doesn't use sand, it seems that his 'job' is also similar in nature to the Sandman.

Though there have been other personifications of sleep in other mythologies as well, but to list them all here might take too long. lol

The Sandman has been used in....well, less nice ways as well. In the story Derr Sandmann, written by E.T.A Hoffmann in 1816, the sandman depicted there is a much more sinister figure, who throw sand into children's faces, steal their eyes to feed them to his own children. This story, and its description of the sandman here, has been referenced in other stories over the years as well.

Romanian mythology has a character similar to this known as Mos Ene, or (Which translates to Ene the Elder.)

For the most part, however, the depictions of the Sandman is that he is a benevolent figure, granting good dreams to children.

In Dreamwalkers, there is no true comparison to the Sandman. However, there is a character who can put people to sleep, so is veeeeeery loosely based around this figure.

Next time, I'll be looking at other mythologies who might be considered somewhat more obscure. You might even see them in the story, or have references towards them. I hope you guys look forwards to it!

Til next time!

Tara

Meaning of the Dream

Hey everyone! Welcome back.

When a person sleeps, particularly during the REM cycle, it is said that is the time that the brain processes the day's events, during which time we tend to dream. It is likely because of this that dreams can be interpreted in some ways to actual real life events, because the brain is in the process of....well, processing things. There are far more studies out there that will be far more technical about it than myself, but today I'm not particularly going into the mechanics of the how, who, what, when and whys for this post. Rather, I will be speaking of the fact that, while not a major part of the story, Dreamwalkers does have an element of dream interpretation involved.

As many of the cases are somewhat episodic, though tied around a central plot, this does mean there are characters, other than the main cast, who might appear for only a single case. This means that there isn't a huge amount of time to talk about side character back stories. After all, the main cast gets the entire series to develop in, and it would certainly start to get annoying if I gave a full biography of every one shot character that might show up. Not only would it bog down the comic, but would also take away from the more natural feel of the events.

As such, a 'show, not tell' approach seemed to be a good idea. Now, how might one tell info about a character without physically talking about it? Well, this is where the dream interpretations come into play. The events of each person's dream differs with each new person. After all, they wouldn't all dream the same thing, and with various types of Onreios, it would certainly be interesting to see how the Dreamwalkers cope on the missions. But not only that, there would be clues to the persons lifestyle in the dreams themselves, insecurities and personal demons which might cause bad dreams in a regular person being used by the Onreios to be twisted against the person in question. If one also applied dream interpretations to it, you could also pick out what those insecurities and demons might actually be.

Not only that, but, in a way, each fight becomes somewhat symbolic of the victim in question being helped around their own insecurities, though in a more direct way, by facing the Onreios that is taking advantage of the securities.

Of course, not everyone would want to spend time looking up interpretations to the dreams, so at the end of each mission that involves a new dream, there will likely be a fact file speaking of the dream interpretation and the Onreios in question. But still, it might be an interesting game to attempt to work out what problems the people have by looking at the dream itself first, at least for those who might be interested in doing so.

Still, some dream interpretations are father fascinating, so I would recommend looking some of them up. Its actually pretty interesting what your subconscious comes up with when the dreamer has particular insecurities or stress that is plaguing them.

Still, what are people's thoughts on this method of storytelling, to let the actual environment also help in the telling of the story itself through the dream interpretations? I'm interested to hear your thoughts, or even if there are any dream interpretations you might like to see in future instalments. Who knows, I might even do that for you (with a dedication to the one who suggests the idea, of course :)

But for now, I hope you all have good dreams

Until next time!

Tara

Busy Busy Busy

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

So, I'll admit, I've been pretty busy lately. As I've been alluding to in a few of my past blog posts, I've been working my newest job, which has been taking up a lot of my free time. Not that this is a bad thing, of course, since it not only pays better than my other job, with more hours, it also allows me to work my passion as well :)

Essentially, I've been hired as a freelance artist to work on a rather large project. At the moment I can't really say what, exactly, until it's done, but I've been enjoying myself.

It has, however, meant that I haven't been doing a lot of personal drawings of late, which is something of a shame, as I don't have anything picture wise to show you all. It's not even through lack of trying, either, but the intensive amount of art means that my various wrist issues have flared out once again, so I've been doing my best to rest my wrists when possible, and use painkillers and wrist braces when I'm working.

Still, while I'm somewhat busy right now, this doesn't, of course, mean forever. So I thought today I would essentially talk bout a few things that I hope to do for you guys in the meantime.

Firstly, I'm considering doing some more Dreamwalkers Lore posts. Currently I've covered things like the currently introduced main cast, and talked about some of the enemies. I'm considering talking about dream interpretations, which play a part in Dreamwalkers, and a bit about mythologies of various cultures that involve dreams/nightmares and the like which may play a part in the series. I have also briefly touched on inspirations that made my come up with the story concept, but I considered looking into it into a bit more detail, not only in my inspirations to creating the story, but the concept of inspiration and imagination, which do play a part in the story itself.

As well as lore, in March, a little closer to the time, I'll be talking about the next scheduled con for the year as well. But it's still a little early right now, since we're currently in February (at least at the time of writing this) and the con is mid March.

Of course, if I have time and my wrists recover enough, I'll of course provide you with posts about my work as well. I miss doing things for you guys! I know that I want to redesign my business card if nothing else.

Still, I hope that you guys will look forwards to this!

Until next time!

Tara

Comic Festival Conclusions

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

So, this weekend, as you may have gathered from my last post, was the first comicon of the year for myself and for TanraStudios - which is to say, True Believers Comic Festival (or TBCF, as its sometimes referred to as). Today, I'm going to give you all heads up of the events and how I felt the con went for anyone who might be thinking of going to said con another time.

So, for those of you who don't know, TBCF is a comic festival that takes place at Cheltenham racecourse in Gloucestershire, and mostly caters towards the indie comic scene, though there are still stalls that do have other kinds of merchandise as well. This year's event is the second TBCF that I have been to, if one doesn't count the smaller Mall Con, which was also ran by the True Believer's team

This year, Myself and Nadia were running a stall for TanraStudios, where we were selling the comics Susanoo, Unbound, Dreamwalkers and Pandora, along with our prints and the Lucky Dip, which usually is well received. I unfortunately had to refrain from doing commissions this time, though, as both of my wrists are currently needing supports. A bit of a shame, really, but its better to not do them this time than potentially permanently ruin my wrists, right?

Sorry about me not being in the picture. Don't worry, I was not absorbed by the coat on my chair - I was the one behind the camera lol!

Here's me, for those who might be interested in seeing me. :P If not, then oh well, I hope I didn't put you all off. lol

Anyway, we even had the trailer running for the Pandora Comic as well, though perhaps we needed it to be on a constant replay so we could have placed it in the middle or on a stand. As it was, we had to keep nudging it once it reached the trailer's end. Still, it's the first time we tried something like this, so it was a learning curve.

The event was pretty interesting. This year they allowed the stall members to pre-order food, which was very helpful, especially since they delivered the food to the table, which was a godsend during busy times when you can't leave the table, as usually, by the time you can get to the food stands, most of the food would already be gone. So I do hope that this is something they continue on next time.

As for the event itself, it did seem quieter this year, though it was possibly due to placement - last year we were situated on route to the café areas, so had a fair amount of constant through traffic, whereas our placement this time was further away from there. Of course, it was entirely possibly that it generally was quieter, but that was just how it appeared to me. We did sell less this year as well, unfortunately, which was a shame, but again, this might have been due to placement or their being less people. Some other stalls had mentioned similar things.

Speaking of, we did see some people from last year. We even got recognised, which was awesome, and some people bought our new books after having bought our older titles last time. We also got to see some old stall friends too, which was pretty awesome. The people on the stalls were all pretty friendly. One person from a bake-stall even came around and we got these really nice cupcakes too! I wish I could have taken a photo of that, but....well, I kinda ate it too fast. *blushes* It was really nice!

So, while it wasn't quite as successful as last year, it was still pretty enjoyable. I do hope that things do improve somewhat next time, though.

If anyone attended True Believers this year, tell me what you thought of the events, maybe if its only to comment on a cosplay you liked, or if anyone attended any of the podcast events. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

But, until next time!

Tara