World Dream Bank home - add a dream - newest - art gallery - sampler - dreams by title, subject, author, date, places, names

Dreamtales--the Gif Series

Dreamtales are a series of comics telling dreams. There are two series, an early "Gif Series" and a later "Jpeg Series".

THE GIF SERIES ran 1990-1994, each issue cartooning an epic dream; they were some of the first purely digital comics, i.e. not scanned but drawn with a mouse or pen & tablet and saved as GIFs with low resolution and just 8-16 colors. I didn't call them "the Gif Series" then, but their look is quite distinct. They were meant to be zines. Remember zines? But since their filesizes were modest, they were ideal for the early Web, and I soon uploaded them.

THE JPEG SERIES: From 1994 on, I drew in pencil, then scanned, tinted and shaded. Intricate and flowing, they look a bit like some of Shaun Tan's page-spreads in The Arrival. These very different comics, which I now think of as "the JPEG series", were meant for paper publication only--they were just too high-resolution and detailed to post on the early Web. I'm only publishing them online now (2017), twenty years after drawing them! I've included, on the list below, the first two Jpeg tales, A Sphinx's Sketchbook and Wing It!, since they were numbered as if part of the Gif series. I hadn't yet faced that I'd stumbled into a very different thing--not zines, more fine art. For the whole Jpeg Series see Dreamtales.

RELATED TOPICS: dream comics in general - posters and picture-poems (words and images like comics, but not sequential) - dreams and movies - TV dreams - books, writers and writing - dreams in ink - fractal and compound art - dreamwork in general - See also the full INDEX OF SUBJECTS.

What this site is - Add your dreams! - How to read blurbs - Ratings - Copyright - Downloading - The World Dream Bank has 4000 dreams plus 1000 pages on dreamwork, shamanism, surrealism, fantasy, worldbuilding, creativity and genius. Site © Chris Wayan 2001-2022.


#0 (test run) a surreal but nondream comic
SAX: by Wayan; 1991/5/19, an 8-page digital comic--a true nondream story.
Alone in my blue room, I heard sax music. Two sunbathers were jamming outside my window...
CAUTION: SEX AND SAX
#1
BROWN DRESS: by Wayan; 1984/2/11, 9-page digital comic of a sexy healing dream.
A champion swimmer tells me how she turned a sexual humiliation into excitement and liberating power...
CAUTION: NUDITY, SEX, SHAME, PSYCHOLOGICAL COMPLEXITY
#2
MY THREE HUSBANDS: by Wayan; 1981/2/26 & 1991/5/26, dreams drawn as a 15-page comic
I'm three women at once! We marry a unicorn, a goat philosopher,
and a magic talking cat. But cops raid our furry commune...
CAUTION: INTERSPECIES MARRIAGE, TEEN SEX, BAD COPS
#3
A KNIFE AT HIS THROAT: by Wayan; 1991/1/1; a political dream-cartoon-fable
A courtroom hostage-drama where I'm forced to commit... tracheotomy! And then the Gulf War begins...
CAUTION: CARTOON VIOLENCE
#4
RABBIT WORLD: by Wayan; 6-page comic of a 1990/9/26 shamanic dream.
I'm a telepathic rabbit defending our world from space-laser attack. We do, but do we modernize too much?
CAUTION: IDEAS
#5: MANTA, BRIDGE, PROGRESS: three short tales
MANTA MOTHS: by Wayan; 1990/10/3, a transcendental nightmare echoing a dream 8 years before, (1982/1/22)
Manta Moths pick us off us explorers... or do they? An old scroll spoke of fear leading to transformation...
THE BRIDGE: by Wayan; a 3-page comic from two linked dreams, 1989/5/28 & 1989/10/1.
The Hunt of the Unicorn (yeah, guess who I am), as I fly through the worlds fighting Reaganism...
CAUTION: MOCKS THE GREAT COMMUNICATOR
MAKING PROGRESS STANDING STILL: by Wayan; 1990/10/1; a healing dream cartooned.
I dreamed I slowly climbed out of guilty longing to an exciting climax on the Escalator of Love...
CAUTION: CARTOON SEX, NUDITY, GENDER POLITICS
#6
FIVE HEARTS: by Wayan; dreamed 1989/1/11; sexy psychic unicorn dream-comic (text only: FIVE HEARTS)
I'm a nurse pulled through a glowing well to a world ruled by a five-hearted unicorn, who wants me to...
CAUTION: NUDITY, SEX FANTASIES, LONGING, MELANCHOLIA
#7
I GOT OUT: by Wayan; 1992/1/4, a psychic dream drawn as a 9-page digital comic
I flee our love triangle when Abe turns mean. He's telepathic, but
I have my escape all planned: the goldfish, the snakepit, the caves...
CAUTION: THREESOME, SNAKES, MOTORCYCLE FATALITY
#8
I MIST MY SISTER: by Cory and Wayan; 1992/9/20; a dream-comic. Cory's healing dream triggers one by Wayan
My friend Cory's sore back is healed by a dream. So I ask for the same, and get this dream of incest...
CAUTION: KARMA, SEX/NUDITY, INCEST ISSUES
#9: last Dreamtale composed digitally on screen with no physical art, with limited colors, saved as GIFs.
GOLD EATER: by Wayan; 1993/1/15 dream drawn as 9-page comic.
I'm an orphan shapeshifter enslaved by a gold-eating monster. But I meet a cat-girl with a hammer...
CAUTION: BAD FOSTER-DAD; CAPITALIST MONSTER; VIOLENCE (TO VENDING MACHINES)
#10: the first piece with physical art: pencils scanned, tinted and deepened digitally. This hybrid method became my default.
A SPHINX'S SKETCHBOOK: by Wayan; dreamed 1994/7/2 & 7/19; a 23-page dream-comic
I find the sketch-journal of a beautiful winged sphinx who left her mythic isle
to explore a great city of crazy bipeds, called San Francisco...
CAUTION: SPHINX SEX, SPHINX ATTITUDE
#JAM: first nondream comic of any length, further testing pencil technique.
WING IT: by Wayan, 1995/12/29-1996/2/14, a 9-page improv comic.
An art experiment--the only rule is DRAW without preconceptions--
no models, no ideas, no plans, not even dreams. Drawing from the void!
Dreamtales had clearly entered strange new territory: the Jpeg Series.
DREAMTALES: by Wayan; 1996-2006, a 250-page collection of dream comics
"I've always dreamed other lives. Other bodies. Other times. Other worlds. I draw my lives..."


This topical list is one of many. See the full LIST OF TOPICS currently indexed.

World Dream Bank homepage - Art gallery - New stuff - Introductory sampler, best dreams, best art - On dreamwork - Books
Indexes: Subject - Author - Date - Names - Places - Art media/styles
Titles: A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - IJ - KL - M - NO - PQ - R - Sa-Sk - Sl-Sz - T - UV - WXYZ
Email: wdreamb@yahoo.com - Catalog of art, books, CDs - Behind the Curtain: FAQs, bio, site map - Kindred sites