In Dreams Wake

Concept Art:

Here are a few art pieces I personally made during the development of Act I that relates to the story.

This first one was a general concept I made for "The Stranger" from Chapter 4. The piece as a whole was inspired by a Thornhill song by the name of "Something Terrible Came With The Rain." The title and sound of the song seemed a perfect fit for this character, although this specific scene isn't something that will be in the story.

The character himself is based on the urban legend of "The Stranger," also known as "Hat Man". They're a demon that can appears during sleep paralysis, who watches the victim from the end of their bed. Some have also alleged to have seen him before an untimely death. I've taken pieces of the lore to use in this story, but I am using my own world-building and mechanics to explain his nature, as well as fleshing him out into his own character.

Another concept that is heavily inspired by Chapter 4 but does not explicitly appear in the book. This was my first time ever drawing the Beck, and I think I got across the face I imagined him to have: messy, curly hair, lean, and a pronounced jawline.

The layout of the room does not reflect the layout of his suite in the story, but I wanted to capture the other-worldliness and deceptive reality it his. I like how the composition turned out, but not my best attempt at drawing "The Stranger."

My concept for Patch. The initial idea for them arose from Anya Boz's room guardians, animal-like dolls meant to protect homes from negative influences. I took that concept and ran with it. These creatures are called Velours in my world (French for "velvet"), and are personal protectors and guides in the Reverie. They will be elaborated on a lot more in Chapter 7.

Similar to Boz's dolls, I made the Velours have proportions similar to their animal counterparts. It aesthetically separates them from traditional animal dolls, and makes them more uncanny (which is a good thing in this case). Velours will appear as a variety of different animals, but I specifically made Patch a bear due to teddy bears being commonly associated with keeping someone safe while they are sleeping.

Commissioned Art:

I have a lot of artist friends, so I also got some art done from them for characters in the story. Here are the pieces I've commissioned thus far:

Patch by ScottyArtz on Twitter

Patch by Foxena on Twitter

Beck and Patch also by Foxena on Twitter

Bonus Commentary:

With the story being as early on as it is I can't reveal too much about the world or characters, but I can talk about what initially inspired the story since a most of that core was put into Chapter 6. The story and specifically the Reverie itself started life as a Bioshock fan-fiction. For those unfamiliar with the series, it features civilizations existing parallel to 20th century America that were built on good intentions but that eventually devolved into chaos. The civilization I imagined was one that existed as a world in limbo, a place that people could only visit when they existed between life and death. Since attaining such a comatose state isn't desirable, the few that entered hid secrets too dark to hide in the real world, sure in the security of a reality no human would dare tread willingly.

The unreality of this limbo world bloomed later on. I tend to latch on to specific music, making the experience of a song the main inspirations for my stories. In this case one of the biggest songs that spurred on In Dream's Wake is called "Pushing Objects Through Walls" by the musician I Will Never Be The Same. If you were curious about the abstract title of Chapter 6, now you know where I lifted it from. The music depicts a dream-like state with illogical rules of nature which drew me in, and while the coma angle had some of that, I pivoted towards lucid dreaming in no small part to this song.

There are a couple of lyrics that jump-started the story. The first is the opening verse:

"Slowly pushing objects through walls

Answering the phone before someone calls

The lights won't turn on

You are there I can feel it"

The second line especially grabbed me, and is something else I directly lifted and used in Chapter 6. The idea of the song also implanted the idea in my head of someone getting up from their bed, only to turn around and realize a copy of themselves is still sleeping there. I imagined seeing this would change a person in some way, and eventually became the trigger that fully opened Beck's mind to the reality of the Reverie. The first half of Chapter 6 was the first part of the story I wrote, since I wanted to make sure I could actually achieve the tone and atmosphere I wanted.

The outro of the song also caught me:

"This thing inside will never die

No matter how much you try

So just close your eyes and let it inside

Cause this dream was real."

I liked the idea of what happens in a dream having repercussions in the real world. I definitely got the idea from the movie Inception, but this song brought it back to my attention (I guess the movie was effective in its premise).

Later, the world took on more identity after I started listening to a lot of music by Caravan Palace. Their whole aesthetic solidified the idea of a Roaring Twenties setting. It made a lot of other pieces fall into place too; the turn of the century saw the world teetering the line between holding to folklore and rushing into modernity with scientific discovery. This tension is something that makes for interesting character dynamics, so there are many in the story that are a melding of both ideas. Rowan is a man at the forefront of psychology, but is obsessed with a dream world whose rules more closely resemble fairy tales. Florence is a soothsayer in a troupe who brings wonder to its audience, but she uses social science as her intuition.

Speaking of psychology, its influence can be seen in many of the other chapter names. Gestalt is an organized whole seen as something greater than the sum of its parts, a way to describe the lore and concepts that make up the Reverie. Perceptual Set is the predisposition we have to see things a certain way, something Beck needed to overcome to discover the Reverie. Synchronicity is the simultaneous occurrence of events without links to each other (basically the collective unconscious), something that in the universe of the story is explained by the existence of the Reverie.

That's all for now, I'll have a lot more to dig into and explain once things start to get rolling with the story, so until then stay tuned!