#dreammeiser asks

[dreammeiser]

Hello! I just found your work and its honestly so inspiring to me as student in college for general fine arts who's wanting to go into character and concept design :o) I do personal work as well to keep me character designing so seeing your personal work and then stating you've worked in the industry is really inspiring to me! I love your portfolio site! forgive me if this is a bit invasive but is the professional work password protected due to the fact its copyrighted? if so I understand! I was just curious as I love looking at other peoples concept work as Id love see how other people do their concept art and character design [as Disney "the art of x" inspired me to get into the concept art field] thank you for reading! have a lovely day!

Hiya!! Man, thank you so much for the kind words! I'm really happy to provide any inspiration, ah!!! Character design is a really fun field to work in but hard to break into, so I'm always happy to give advice in that regard if there's ever a need :o) There's a lot of my personal art on there because it's good to show that you have a genuine passion for this and do it in your spare time, too.

Also not an invasive ask, I do have to put a password on my professional work because a lot of it is NDA work (Non-Disclosure Agreement for those unfamiliar). I also went ahead and put one on my resume as well for the same reason! Probably not the norm, but when you have a personal project that suddenly starts getting traction, you kinda have to for some privacy.

I hope that helps! Take care :o))

[shantimochi]

I have a lot of fun drawing Earl as you can tell! Exploring his poses and silhouette is always such a fun challenge 🧡

Also that last slide is Earls reaction after you trick him into doing his court ordered community service. How he ended up in jail you might ask?

Tax evasion.

Early Early Oxenfree from Dream Along With Me belongs to @dreammeiser

[chaifootsteps]

It’s a good thing they made their boundaries at the start because even if it’s fruitless, it’s nice they’re at least trying to calm before the storm happens.

https://www.tumblr.com/dreammeiser/746058415877603328/boundaries

That's the way to do it.

(I do think people who request no NSFW be made of their characters are kind of setting themselves up for failure, but it's probably true that there'll be less of it than if they'd never asked at all.)

[dreammeiser]

came across a really bad troll (posting some messed up things) and opened this blogs for the good vibes. so thank you <3

Ahhhh!!! Help is on the way, friend!!!! We've got cozy blankets and your favorite warm beverage. :o) Mufflin is a very good hugger!

[dreammeiser]

Hi, hello! I don't know if this is something you've already answered or frequently get asked, but what are some tips/tutorials you'd give when it comes to drawing puppet characters?

I'm making my own puppet project, but I still have a bit of trouble when drawing them. So I hope it's alright to ask you for advice for that.

💙

Hi there! I'd love to give you some advice from what I learned at Henson's and from my experience as a character designer :o) For your project, I'd say think about who your target audience is first; who do you want looking at your project? Nostalgic young/adults? Teens? Tweens? Secondly, you'll want to think of your inspiration sources-- unless you're making a parody, we don't want to be straight up pastiche! I will say, put a little bit of yourself and your sensibilities into it, as that's the approach I took when designing my puppet fellas, but also, look at the stories and characters that you enjoy and make a list of what specifically you like about them. I'm going to use Jim Henson styled puppets as an example since I think that's the look you're aiming for: you're going to want to look at how his puppets were constructed and how they moved and try to translate that to a 2D medium. I can't stress this enough, grab references!!! Grab as many as you need! Pay attention to how their material looks, how it's stitched, how the puppet's shape is constructed, look at their mouth plates, how the arms and legs may bend, head shape, eye shape-- you get the idea!

Here are some examples I grabbed from my DAWM pinterest board: Look at the different head shapes, mouth shapes, how fabric my fold near the corners of the mouth to form a smile-- there's a ton of resources to use as reference when designing little Muppety fellas :o) It's also good to consider what kind of puppet they are! Are they a hand-rod puppet like Kermit? Live-hands like Swedish Chef? Or are they a Walk-around puppet like Big Bird?

I think it's important to note that although we may want to incorporate some kind of anatomy here and there, that we try to forgo adding in muscles. It can be difficult when you've been trained to draw muscles on everything (and I struggle this sometimes too!) but for the sake of making these guys fully silly and fully puppety, you must retain the appearance of fabric and not of flesh (unless a flesh puppet is what you desire!).

Attention to details like these will help pull the illusion together! I hope this is helpful!

[dreammeiser]

Hi! I love your work and I absolutely adore your DAWM designs!!! I hope this isn’t a rude question, but I saw you mention you previously were involved with the Jim Henson Company and was curious about your experience and what working there looked like for you? I hope this is not overly invasive of an ask, and I completely understand if you’re not willing to answer for whatever reason! :3 Thank you for your time ☆

Aw gosh! Thank you so much for the kind words! Not invasive or rude at all, I appreciate you asking-- I just usually keep most things to myself unless asked, haha!

Oh man, where do I start... Working there felt surreal! I got to see people I admired nearly my whole life around the office and TALK to them every day-- I don't want to drop names but a lot that are famous in the puppet community. And they were the nicest people at the office too, I still talk with them sometimes! They had a room that had some clay maquettes from previous projects that were gorgeous! We had a resident puppet chilling around the office from old pizza commercials named Bad Andy and sometimes we'd goof around with him! He was a little monkey guy! I was too shy to play with him a lot, which I shouldn't have been, because the others would just make him say bad words anyway, HA!

The guy, dying ^

One of the female Skeksis from the Dark Crystal movie was encased in glass near the kitchen so you had to pass by it every time you wanted coffee or a snackaroo... :'o) I was still very scared of Skeksis so I would walk very fast past her, hahaha! The Pinocchio puppet from The Adventures of Pinocchio movie was also chilling in the same room! There's puppets all over! When I was there, I was working on Sid the Science Kid! As an intern, I did not get a whoooole lot of responsibilities (as one can imagine, I was a very baby-level artist and I was 18/19), but I did get to contribute some art to a couple episodes, although... In the choices I would give them, they would always pick the paintings I was least proud of HAHAHA. When I have the time, I will try to revive my back-then work computer that still has some of my artwork so I can show you guys, I think it should be fine by now. :'o) But I do have a shirt from back then that I still wear all the time. If you remember Gerald from the show, he had this little dino shirt:

My shirt... and then the guy... Zooming at us, menacingly... My bird Kraken kinda chewed up the shirt around the shoulders, augh!

Also, they used some motion-capture animation for Sid! I remember the actors putting on these giant silly suits that had huge feet, huge heads, and huge hands that fit the proportions of the characters, with little ping pong ball-looking attachments to them. Those actors worked really hard to run around in those suits, it was impressive!

There was also!! A screen connected to a console and a controller that we would goof around on because you could control Sid's expressions with it, so we'd all have a turn on it sometimes to make the silliest faces with it and make each other laugh :oD

I remember back then my brain had a creative itch that Sid wasn't scratching enough (sorry if that sounds weird, I hope you know what I mean?), but talking with my dad about it, he recommended I make a story that I had wanted to work on at Henson's, so I took an existing character I had from high school (that's Earl!!) and started making a story with him about puppets, toys, and dolls that were all adventuring through a dream world and trying to overcome living nightmares. It has been dropped and picked back up and redesigned several times, but it eventually became Dream Along With Me. A lot of things I learned from Sid/Henson's actually helped inform how I redesigned the project too!

There's a lot more cool stuff I could talk about but I worry about being boring/rambling/accidentally writing a novel. I'll save it for later if asked again :'o) Thank you for asking!! It felt good to reminisce!

[dreammeiser]

Your line art is so smooth and the colors you use for it is really cohesive! I love your art so much!!!

Can I make fanart of your stuff??? 💖

Oh gosh, thank you so much for the kind words! I struggle with my lines because of an injury I got a long time ago so I'm really happy that they look alright! For a while I was only really confident with my colors :'o) It's really sweet of you to want to make any fanart for me, honestly draw whatever your heart desires, I am happy to receive anything at all if and when I do!

[dreammeiser]

Very random one but what is your favourite ice cream flavour? And cookie? :D

Mine?! Hmmm...

... I have to think and remember what I like hahaha!

When I can find it, my absolute favorite is Milk Tea Ice Cream! Especially with the brown sugar glaze and boba... When I can't find it, I tend to opt for coffee or lavender!

With cookies, I really loved these Kona Coffee Cookies that were dipped in a cream from Trader Joes, but they no longer have them and now I'm going to think about those cookies for the rest of my stupid life

[dreammeiser]

How did your artstyle get to how it is now? Just asking because your style feels so inspirational :3

Oh wow! Thank you for saying it's inspirational, haha!! :'o) <3 It wasn't easy... it took many years, but I allowed myself a lot of time to experiment and think on the kind of art I wanted to make.

Ease of animation, allowing myself to draw what I thought was fun and scratched my creative itch, and thinking of the art that stuck with me is what I think influenced my style the most. Making a mental note of what I liked about my favorite media and playing around with those elements was part of the process.

I think, most importantly, I also thought of the art I wanted to see more of in the world, and I made it for myself, even if no one else saw it or even if they hated it! If it's something you want to eventually share with the world, people that like the same things will eventually find you and you can be buddies :o)

[dreammeiser]

Hey!! Just discovered your project and it looks so cool omg! Where else can I follow you? Do you have other social media besides tumblr?

Hi there!! Thank you so much for asking :o) I mainly use Instagram, actually! But you can find me on all sorts of platforms: https://www.instagram.com/dreammeiser/ https://twitter.com/dreammeiser https://www.tiktok.com/@dreammeiser https://www.youtube.com/@dreammeiser I include Youtube because that's where I'll be uploading episodes and extra animated content in the future :oD Thank you!

[dreammeiser]

hi i literally just found u and i’m new here:) ur actually rlly creative after i just scrolled and browsed over ur tumblr. Don’t stop doing what u’re doing…:)

That's really sweet of you to say, thank you for the kind words :'o) I do my best with the tools in my belt, be it nostalgia or just life experiences, so I'm really happy when people see that vision 😭

[dreammeiser]

Hi I love ur art what filters do you use to make ur aren't so soft and dream like

Oh thank you! I can only answer in terms of Photoshop, since that is all I use for digital illustrations, but: Copy the entire painting (use Ctrl+Shift+C) and paste onto its own layer on top of the rest of your layers! Set the layer opacity to 30% and use the Gaussian Blur Filter! Then hit Ctrl+Shift+C again and on this new layer, use the Add Noise Filter to achieve the hazy 80s anime effect. I hope this is helpful :o)

[dreammeiser]

I love the use of pastels/colors on your art. (Dream along with me)

There something about it that scratches my brain :D

AH Thank you so much! I really love pastel kidcore aesthetics myself :o) I've been trying to capture that style for a while, it just feels nice and cozy and at-home for me. I'm glad it itches something in your brain too!! Ain't that nice!

Fun little tidbit for you because I felt like it and I get asked about it a lot too: My palette for these fellas were inspired off of Sesame Street and Carebears of course (all the characters together make a rainbow!!! It's so cute!!!), but with a little bit of that retro charm you'd see in older animation like Don Bluth, Rankin Bass, Sanrio films, and the Moomin series from the 90s (my favorite!)

That's just off the top of my head :oD I have giant pinterest boards for several Dreamalong things if you'd like to see. I like to be open with my resources-- especially with how people have been behaving lately, ha! Here you go:

[dreammeiser]

Hi Dreammeiser, I just wanted to tell you that your art work of Dream Along With Me is beautiful like a dreamscape!

But may I ask you a question, I apologize if you find it rude. You don't have to answer if you don't want to expose spoilers or you find the question offensive.

Question: is Dream Along With Me a puppet show for kids like sesame street?

Aw gosh! Thank you so much for the kind words!! Also, not a rude question at all! Do not worry! Hmmm, if we are asking about the show I am working on as I am presenting it? I would say it's aimed for adults/young adults/teens/maybe tweens will get a kick out of it, ha! They seem to like FNAF anyhow! But if we're talking in-universe, Dream Along With Me would have been a show aimed at children like Sesame Street and Moomin, yes! Their show was packaged as a goodnight story programme for children, as told by puppets. :o)