In my previous post, I was leaning more towards creating a book illustrating multiple dreams, but now I will focus all of my energy on creating a single, detailed pop up book for one of my dreams. Below is one of the dream journal entries where I describe the environment I am basing this project off of, if anyone is interested in reading it, but here is just a summary for the sake of time.
This scenario/landscape is one that I’ve dreamt about multiple times, it really sticks out to me in my mind. I end up on a beach where nothing feels right. The waves are moving at a pace that defies logic, the colors are grimy, and I feel incredibly uncomfortable in this environment. I want to try to capture the specific landscape and feelings I experienced in this dream by using different pop up techniques. I am particularly interested in using tabs (to reveal certain elements as they arise), incorporating different materials (for example: a reflective or shiny material to mimic light bouncing off of water), and using layers of paper to create a sense of depth (similar to a tunnel book technique).
Here is the tentative color palette I will be working with. I am going for a “horror primary” feel, with a few hints of high-saturation primary colors, but for the most part, I want them to feel dark and grimy to create an unsettling effect.
This week I have started a Pinterest board for potential reference images and different forms of pop up books.
Dream Journal Entry
10/20/18
I don’t know how I got there (or what was happening before this part of the dream..), but I somehow ended up on a beach. I know I’ve dreamt about this place at least once before, but it feels even more familiar than that. I’m pretty sure this location is a combination of Sauvie Island, the Jersey Shore, and maybe a little bit of the Oregon Coast…. Maybe that’s why I felt such intense deja vu after I woke up, because this is a landscape, or a collage of multiple landscapes, that I’ve been to before in real life.
The actual beach (sandy portion) has an incline. The texture of the sand is thick and coarse, and there are lots of pebbles dispersed throughout. You don’t have to walk very far down the beach to reach the water. The waves were incredibly angry and intense, and moved in an unnerving manner. I think the main thing that freaked me out was the rhythm of the waves. It was very unnatural and they wouldn’t crash at the “right time”. I didn’t really notice this at first, I just was thinking, “wow, it’s a stormy day”. But as the dream progressed I became increasingly aware of how the water was moving. The form/shape of the water also appeared a bit off. They seemed more jagged than in real life? Like when the water would spray or shoot up into the air the droplets seemed sharp. The sense of depth in the water varied dramatically, too. It was unrealistic. Within the waves there would be these pockets of black/dark colors, indicating that it was deep I guess, but it completely defied logic. Anyway, it was just really uncomfortable to look at. No one else seemed to see what I was seeing.
The colors were all dark and cool toned. The sky was sort of casting this greyish-blue tint onto everything in the landscape. There were primary colors… red, yellow, blue-green, but they all looked grimy. The first thing that came to my mind was that the color palette felt “primary-horror”. I don’t know if that makes sense but… it had the feel of an old/dirty toy store or circus.
I was with my family, and a few other people.. I think my parent’s friends? I’m not really sure if they are real or a combination of a bunch of different people. We were all just hanging out on the beach. I remember feeling vaguely annoyed at everyone. They were talking too loud or laughing too much… I don’t know, I was just in such a bad mood. I think I was mad just because no one seemed to notice how weird this beach was. There was also this kid who kept trying to trap hermit crabs in a san pellegrino can.
Time also felt really strange in this dream, so I’m having a hard time piecing together the sequence of events, like ___ lead to ____… I just know that overtime, the tide crept higher on the beach, which was not the longest beach to begin with. The waves kept getting taller. They would extend over the beach in a way where it felt like it would crash right on top of us, but then it would sort of recoil and miss us, retreat back into the ocean, but then come back again.
