Hello, hi! I'd like to introduce you to my animated indie series that I've been working on called Dream Along With Me! Dream Along With Me will follow the lives and antics of a group of puppet friends, The Dreamalong Gang, as they navigate a patchwork dreamscape while being stalked by secrets and horrors of the past. An escapist dream may become their cotton-candied purgatory!

On their journey through the subconscious, you will be joining: Archie Aster, the Stellar Storyteller and his Living Shadow Early Early Oxenfree the Soothsaying Trickster Mae Flowers the Rainbow Goblin Lunette Lullabye the Playtime Devil Honeybell the Counting Sheep Darling Fiona the Wayward Siren Teddy O'Stara the Merrymaking Magician Mufflin Mallow the Big Rock Candy Monster Bertie Sherbet the Softserve Sweetheart Oddrey Shivers the Phantom Primadonna And your Friendly Midnight Television Host, Roy G. Biv! Walk on into that Good Night carefully friends, lest The Strangers of the Wonder Void hear you!

📺Your Willing Submission is Smiled Upon by Roy and The Lost Signal! 📺

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MAJOR THANK YOU to all those that participated in my Celebratory 10K DTIYS over on Instagram! It was amazing how many of you turned up for our Roy G. Boy! The Bivster! A lot happened between the deadline and now, a move, a loss, fires, health complications, but I wanted to make the announcement post special for your outstanding patience, love, understanding, and outpouring support.

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✨Credits✨

The voice of Roy G. Biv is the amazingly talented @syntheticcharmva! @bit-b on Bluesky helped with the Audio Engineering on Roy's voice! A huge thank you to @shantimochi for clean-up animation and coloring and @eddieentertainment for the background art and prop design on the cloud fridge! Please give a big round of applause and love to everyone that helped, they're incredible people to work with and I love them lots! <:o)

Oh this was fun to think about!! It'll be long... excuse the word wall!

I think Archie would get along best with Julie Joyful and Barnaby Beagle! Julie and Barnaby both have friendly, goofy, fun-loving energy that Archie enjoys being around :o) Earl, Mae, and Lunette would love these two hooligans as well for obvious reasons! I feel like their energies would bounce off each other a lot in a funny way!

Mae would have an appreciation for Sally Starlet and Eddie Dear! Sally's bombastic theatre energy would draw Mae in and excite her! Eddie is relatable to her as the two are the apparent people-pleasers and Mae would sympathize a lot with his struggles. Mae would also be very drawn to Wally for reasons she can't explain, she just finds him charming and handsome :o) Poppy would also be a warm presence to her, and she'd view Poppy as an older sister/motherly figure to look up to.

Honeybell would hang out exclusively with Frank Frankly and they'd gossip with each other and share little theories about the friends around their neighborhoods HAHAHA! She'd also call Sally Starlet noisy to her face. (rude)😭 I think she'd also be drawn to Poppy's caring heart too!

Fiona would try to get on Howdy Pillar's good side to gain another client, honestly HAHA. I think she'd take Julie, Barns, and Wally on joyrides on her vespa, they'd all have a fun ole time (except Wally, who might not enjoy this) right up until she crashes it. She'd offer to deliver Poppy's baked goods to everyone around Home and Dreamalong (and give Mufflin a damn run for his money)

Teddy would try to flirt with Julie before getting an epic Frank smackdown. I don't think anybody from Home would like Teddy. 😂 Perhaps he'd be tolerated by Barnaby and Howdy (moreso frienemies with Howdy). He'd have a rivalry with Sally Starlet that's petty and stupid. He harbors a raging jealousy of Wally.

Mufflin and Bertie would absolutely not go near Howdy with a ten foot pole-- Bertie would probably get some underhanded insults from Howdy for being a slow speaker, and Mufflin is experienced enough to spot a jerk when he sees one 😭 Mufflin wouldn't know how to feel about Wally, torn between feeling off with him and wanting to comfort him.

Roy would find Howdy delightful and get into staring battles with Wally before breaking out into wild, unhinged laughter.

AH THANK YOU I am looking forward to what we'll be releasing this year for you! A lot of life's ups and downs have caught me off-guard this year but I'm back in the stride of things!

OOOO YAY A MAE AND HONEYBELL QUESTION!! Let's see... let me ask them... They're slumber party pals 🥹💛💜 Honeybell is Mae's wise, intellectually dependable friend that she can depend on for life advice, and Mae is Honeybell's soft filter on life that helps her face her daily burdens.

Mae's naivete frustrates Honeybell though, and Honeybell's impatience with high-energy antics makes Mae feel somewhat repressed sometimes, requiring more of a social battery for their interactions. There's little things about each other that annoys the other but they try to accept each other for their faults! They still love each other! :oD

Mae: Earl said something about mixing rubbing alcohol and bleach to get tough spots out, I might-- Honeybell: GIRL NO!!!! NO!!!!!

Ooooh hi! Let's see, I think there's a lot of things that factored into what drew folks to DAWM, there are a couple criteria that could help you and other creators in drawing an audience :o)

Firstly, know who your audience is! Do you want to appeal to children, teens, adults? More than one group? Figure out what your audience likes, what's trending with them, and try to factor in what you like yourself. You're part of the audience too!

Secondly, have something sort of like a pitch bible or a proof of concept that shows what the intended product is about and how it will look. One of the first things I ever uploaded for DAWM that blew up was the animation test I made of Archie and Earl simply walking together. The goal with that piece was to see if their designs were feasible for animation, showcase their personalities and designs, and hint at the underlying unease/discomfort in their story in the form of a tiny antagonist on Earl's shoulder.

Thirdly, show what your story and characters are in as little words as possible... Show more while saying less! I know I talk a lot in my asks but even what I talk about in here doesn't give away much, in all honesty! 😆 Just fun tidbits! Leaving the story and other elements a mystery will create intrigue! Planting little breadcrumbs and seeds for thought will also give your audience something to ponder while they wait for updates :o)

Fourth, be very clear what the identity of your show and characters are. The audience should be able to tell what the characters are about, a hint of what the story will be, and it should follow some sort of logic! Your main character/protagonist is going to be one of the draws, as well as your villain. As an extra little tidbit on your main hero, ask yourself why it can only be that character, why no one else in the cast can take up their burden ahead.

I hope this is helpful!! :oD

Lune/tte Questions make me happy <:'o) I get to blab about them!

Pictured Above: Lune/tte without their hood!

Lune/tte is extraordinarily... supremely... tragically unlucky. <:'o)

They're a curious little creature, which unfortunately lands them in a ton of trouble, all the time.

Their first language was not the common tongue! They spent a lot of their life mute and isolated, growing up knowing limited vocabulary in another language (that only pertained to crafting and toymaking), so even now after a couple years of learning to speak, they forget words and mix them up. (They forget a good amount of things in general)

Due to some plot-relevant circumstances, they essentially got the living-puppet equivalent of nerve damage and physical disability/chronic bodily pain.

Has a knack for finding and repairing broken playthings!

I am airing out Teddy's dirty laundry today it seems... 👁️👁️

So, Teddy is very oriented towards a certain plot-point goal, on top of finessing his magic feats and Ghostmastery Craft. He tries to make time for his dating life, but what ends up happening a lot is that his partners end up getting neglected, and him being somewhat of an egotistical flirt often makes them even angrier 😔

Babette Yaga is one of his more hot-headed exes geared towards total annihilation, yes, hahaha! She's a lover scorned! She comes bearing grudges! A recurring theme with a lot of his "Evil Exes"!

Left: Old Babette concept sketch! Right: A guy that sucks

I'd love to explore different avenues of storytelling with this project! I think I'd like to present the main story in animated form, but would like to create games, comics, and zines for it. Maybe even do something with my website? I have a lot of ideas for these, but for now am focusing on the main project. :o)

(little snippet of a doodle I made of Roy; his book's title is, "Are You There, God? Just Kidding. It's Roy.)

There are a couple tropes within Mascot horror that DAWM subverts actually, yes! I will try to answer this in a way that's non-spoilery...

The mascots being the villains? It's a mix... And some are more morally grey.

We're viewing this story from a third-person perspective!

The Childhood Themes in general being painted with 80s pastel colored trauma and resentment that festers into hatred... and there's layers to it... the story being presented, and then the unspoken one hiding between the lines.

The True Antagonist is not human.

Jumpscares are not gonna be a thing... They make me maaaad

It wasn't inspired by FNAF 😆 But I do like animatronics! They'll be present as background characters or even just as props!

Oooo! I think the show will be disturbing to children! <:o0 I imagine most of it will be PG-13, 16+, or TV-MA, depending on the episode... It's hard to rate it myself, so I try to give trigger warnings to give people a better idea of what kind of content it'll contain.

Gratuitous cursing? No, not a fan. Sex scenes? No... Gratuitous amount of blood? Yeah... Mental Health-driven crises? Yeahh... 😭😭

For a frame of reference, it will not be a Goosebumps or even FNAF horror where they're more geared towards children, it's more along the level of Don't Hug Me I'm Scared, especially with its severe gore and Frightening/Intense scenes.

Where's the rest of ya

AAAHHHHH OKAY!!! You got it, my guy! (using guy in the non-gendered way raaahhh!)

Bertie was inspired by rainbow sorbet ice creams I used to get from Thrifty's when I was little <:o) I still think about that ice cream...

When I first made him, he was species-ambiguous, but he had some qilin aspects to his design that I leaned into more recently.

During the Ming Dynasty, the Chinese admiral, Zheng He, brought back two giraffes from East Africa and the Emperor mistook them for Qilin :oD So Giraffes became associated with Qilin because their description fit the beast.

So Bertie has some Qilin aspects in his design, such as the wild hair, antlers, and the scale-like polka dots while having some Giraffe proportions. :o)

As for why an Ice Cream man... He used to be a mailman, but the old Ice Cream Man uniform from the 1950s were similar enough. I also tried to think of character types that children would be drawn to... and who doesn't love an ice cream man?

I had a think about this and I think a lot of them would actually have some variation of Brown Eyes. 😆

Archie - Black Void Earl - Chocolate Brown Mae - Dark Brown Lunette - Dark Brown Honeybell - Black Void Fiona - Green Teddy - Hazel Mufflin - Blue Bertie - Blue Oddrey - Green Roy - Black Void

Yes 😭😭😭😭 I want to talk about Mae more honestly! Little Goblin was a very self-indulgent character to make! I'll give ya a couple tidbits of development!

Ninnle... [Translation: little]

For those that are new here, Mae is inspired by Ul de Rico's Rainbow Goblins book (same person who authored the Neverending Story, by the way!). Masayoshi Takanaka's concept album of The Rainbow Goblins story was special to a friend I had, too. <:o) She was also inspired by one of my favorite movies ever, The Labyrinth. The goblins in that movie were PEAK

Mae is a greatly loving but incredibly naive spirit that wants to see the best in others! This draws a lot of questionable puppets to her, however!

Mae was not born purple!

Flower growth is a part of her innate Craft, but brewing sodas made from rainbows is part of this Craft too :oD She's a little raincloud goblin.

Her Craft also ties in with her Goblin antics too. She still likes to spook others with thunder and lightning!

April Showers bring Mae Flowers 🤭

Heck yeah I love seeing my Dreamalong shes and theys get love in my ask box!!

So the entire gang actually! Kinda all go by funny monikers! These are not their real names 👀 Oddrey Shivers is not her real name!

Her possession of a non-sentient puppet was absolutely meant to be morbid in that way hehehe, there are absolutely puppets and toys and such in this world in which no one is home, making them free-game for spirits such as Oddrey to take over!

She definitely adopted the devil appearance after she passed!

Oddrey does have abilities beyond that of a Ghost-based Creeper's, but they're... a surprise :o)

Littol snippet of Oddrey concept art I was exploring!

You ever get so busy that you blink and 3 months go by? I feel like I haven't really gotten any kind of break since the turn of the new year... both good and bad (the fires... guh).

I will be answering asks after work around 6PM PST today-- I gotta siphon through the ones I've answered before so if you have a burning question you'd like answered, send them along my way :o)

Littol Roy progress screencap for you to munch on ;o)