ansonanimus aswatanima

12 Common Symbols In Dreams & What They Mean

2014-10-02T12:56:00.003-04:00

“The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego- consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness extends.” ~ Carl Jung

Dreams give us an opportunity to look into our subconscious mind and may allow for a deeper understanding of personal psychological transformation during waking life. Much of the scientific study about the interpretation of the messages that we are given in our dreams has been based on the work of Carl Jung, a well-respected psychologist and psychiatrist, who believed that dreams are filled with symbols that stem from the unconscious.

Interpreting your own dreams can give you an interesting glimpse into the totality of the psyche. If you’re ready for a peek, keep a journal next to your bed and write down what you remember about your dreams as soon as you wake up (because most often you will forget your dream within a few minutes of being awake). To improve your ability to remember your dreams, each night set an intention that you will remember your dreams. Also, it may help to stay free of drugs and alcohol and to limit what you eat 2 or 3 hours before your bedtime.

Below are twelve very common symbols found in dreams and a short description of what each one means. Dream analysis can be an interesting and fun method of self-reflection and conscious personal development, but always remember that all dreams are very personal and esoteric in nature. Carl Jung states:

“It is plain foolishness to believe in ready-made systematic guides to dream interpretation. No dream symbol can be separated from the individual who dreams it, and there is no definite or straightforward interpretation of any dream.” – Man and His Symbols

1. Being Chased – Something Needs Attention

We often remember dreams where we were being chased because it makes us anxious and fearful. The message in these types of dreams is usually about what you are running from. The mind is giving you a hint that something needs your attention, something that you are not addressing, but should.

2. People – Characteristics of the Self

Seeing people in a dream is a representation of the various aspects of the Self. This may give the dreamer ideas of which personal characteristics need attention. If you dream of specific people, this may indicate which interpersonal issues you need to work through, or if you’re detached from a specific aspect of yourself.

3. House – Dreamer’s Mind

There are several layers of consciousness that comprise the mind. Within a dream, a house is believed to be a representation of the dreamer’s mind, with its different floors and rooms relating to the various aspects of the psyche. For example, a basement can represent something that’s been neglected or is not being amply acknowledged by the dreamer in waking life; and bedrooms can represent intimate thoughts, feelings and memories. The activity in the house signifies how the dreamer utilizes the structure of the mind to acquire and interpret information.

4. Food – Knowledge

In the physical world, food nourishes and energizes our bodies. In the dream world, food is a representation of the nourishment of our minds, or, simply put, knowledge. Dreaming about food can also be interpreted that the mind is ‘hungry’ and is seeking new insights and intellect.

5. School – Learning

When a school or classroom is present in a dream, or you dream about the various aspects of schooling such as taking a test, it signifies the learning process. This could be interpreted as a need to learn something from a situation, past or present, or that you are in need of some self-examination.

6. Nudity – Honesty and Openness

When someone appears nude in a dream, it means that a certain aspect or emotion of the dreamer is being expressed openly and without limitation, even to the point that the dreamer feels exposed or vulnerable.

7. Sex – Sexual Expression, Unification and Creation

When one dreams of sexual intercourse, it may represent the unification of unconscious desires and emotions with conscious recognition. Dreaming about sex can also symbolize creation of new intimate relationships with others or with the Self. In many instances, sex dreams are simply an outlet for sexual expression.

8. Vehicles – Giving or Receiving Experience

Vehicles in a dream symbolize a means for experiencing what is happening in our conscious life, how much control we think we have over the path that the experience presents, and the obstacles we are facing. The type and size of vehicle can indicate different messages. For example, large vehicles can symbolize the organization that is enabling the experience, such as your church or company, an ambulance would indicate a need for healing, and a police car would indicate a need for discipline.

9. Baby – Something New

Dreaming about a baby often represents a new idea or development or the potential for growth in a specific area of your conscious life.

10. Death – Change

In the language of the mind, death usually represents the shift from one state of being to another. Although many may perceive death in a dream as frightening or negative, it usually correlates to a dramatic change or transition that is happening in the dreamer’s life.

11. Animals - Dreamer’s Habits

Considering that the function of animals is mostly based on instinct, the presence of animals in a dream is a representation of the dreamer’s habits. Dreaming about animals can be very helpful in gaining insight into our daily patterns as well as our deepest desires. The type of animal, what it is doing and its habitat can all affect the message that is being communicated by the unconscious mind.

12. Falling – Return to Being Awake / Control

Usually, if you are falling during a dream, it symbolizes the process of returning to the state of awake consciousness. Most often than not, the dreamer does not ‘hit bottom’ but will awaken or stop dreaming beforehand. Some believe that if you are falling uncontrollably in a dream, it represents that you don’t feel in control of a certain aspect of your waking life or are afraid to let go of something

Via [www.the-open-mind.com]

How Much Does a Cloud Weigh?

2014-07-09T15:56:00.000-04:00

Image credit:

ThinkStock

Reader Jane wrote in to note that clouds look so nice and fluffy and lighter-than-air, so they certainly can’t weigh much. Right?

When Peggy LeMone was in junior high, a friend’s dad pondered that same question, and she kept it in the back of her mind for years. Now all grown up, LeMone is a researcher at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and she’s figured out an answer. Today, she shares her cloud-weighing technique with us.

First, figure out how dense the cloud is. Scientists have measured the water density of a typical cumulus cloud (the white, fluffy ones you see on a nice day) as 1/2 gram per cubic meter—about a small marble’s worth of water in a space you and a friend could comfortably sit in. The density will be greater for different types of clouds.

Next, figure out how big the cloud is. By measuring a cloud’s shadow when the sun is directly above it, you can get an idea of its width. LeMone does this by watching her odometer as she drives under a cloud. A typical cumulus, she says, is about a kilometer across, and usually roughly cubical—so a kilometer long and a kilometer tall, too. This gives you a cloud that’s one billion cubic meters in volume.

Do the math with the density and volume to determine the total water content of the cloud. In this case, it's 500,000,000 grams of water, or 1.1 million pounds. That’s a lot of weight to wrap your head around, so LeMone suggests putting it in more familiar terms, like elephants. That cloud weighs about as much as 100 elephants. If you’re a Democrat and you’re feeling partisan, she says, you could substitute 2500 donkeys. If you care more for dinosaurs than politics, you could also say the cloud weighs about as much as 33 apatosauruses.

If all those elephants or donkeys or dinosaurs were hanging out in the sky, they’d fall. So how does a several-hundred-ton cloud stay afloat? For one thing, the weight isn’t concentrated in a hundred elephant-sized particles or even a billion marble-sized ones. It’s distributed among trillions of really tiny water droplets spread out over a really big space. Some of these droplets are so small that you would need a million of them to make one raindrop, and gravity’s effect on them is pretty negligible.

What’s more, the cloud is less dense than dry air, so it's buoyant. It also helps that all those little droplets get some lift from updrafts of warm air. Those droplets don’t float forever, though. When the cloud’s water density increases and the droplets get bigger and heavier, the cloud eventually does fall, bit by little bit, in the form of rain.

Via [www.mentalfloss.com]

The Cotton Cloud Series

2014-06-24T12:51:00.004-04:00

The Cotton Cloud Series

Photographer Alexis Mire, based in Boston, has made a poetic series called “The Cotton Series” which stages artificial clouds made of cotton. It gives surreal images in which a cloud goes out of the model-photographer’s mouth and a teapot, or floats above her bed.

via [http://www.fubiz.net/]

Tutorial: Adding a link to an image using an image map in Dreamweaver CS5

2013-09-18T14:34:00.001-04:00

Hey Everyone

This tutorial will pretty much show you how to embed links into images using an image map. There are other ways to make invisible buttons but this way is handy if your using images. First of all find a nice image an decide where you would like your link to be placed within the image.

1. Add the image to your html document:

2. select image when the box pops up after clicking the button:

3. make sure you add alt text to the image, this is a best web practice:

4. See below as Dreamweaver inserts the html code for the image:

5. Now click on design view and click on the image you inserted you will see the set of tools pop up below the image:

6. Click on the image map tool; and drag it over the AMC Logo; this is what I used to be the clickthrough but you can put it anywhere on any image. This way can just design your buttons into an image with the intention of having it link to another website or page:

7. The green highlighted box that appears is the hover area for the link; now you will have to enter the link into another box that the image map will link to:

7. click on code view again to see the code and that's it. Your image will have linked embedded into it wherever you put an image map.

Hope this helps you guys with any image maps your using. Its a really useful tool for simple link embedding into images using html.

There are other ways to make invisible buttons using css. but that may be another tutorial.

Interactivity Demo Reel

2013-08-21T11:27:00.001-04:00

This is a Demo Reel I put together in hopes that you will get an idea of what I do and how the websites I have built utilize interactivity to engage their audience.

These websites can be seen in my Portfolio along with others that aren't featured in the video.

How To Control Your Dreams

2013-06-06T12:23:00.001-04:00

The ability to control one’s dream need not only exist in fantastical movies like Inception.

Furniture retailer BedroomWorld has created an infographic that explores the concept of lucid dreaming, a dream state in which the sleeper knows that he is dreaming.

It provides information on useful techniques that will help you achieve the rare lucid dream—for instance, keeping track of your dreams in a journal and eating food that contains melatonin would help you enter a lucid dream.

The infographic also teaches one how to conduct reality checks during a dream—being aware that you dreaming makes it easier for you to lucid-dream.
To obtain the “power” of controlling your dreams, read on.

[via Daily Infographic]

Promotions on Instagram

2013-05-16T14:30:00.000-04:00

Hey guys This is a tutorial of sorts on doing promotions on Instagram.
First of all Instagram photos are 612px x 612px in dimension.
When you search or click on a hash-tag on Instagram, photos related to it show up in 3 columns on your phone. Now the trick to doing a good promotion on Instagram is using however many rows you choose by the 3 columns
Note that the dimension of the image you are using will have to correspond with the number of rows and columns on Instargram.
For this example I will use a simple 1 row x 3 columns.

1. Create an image with the dimensions 1836px x 612px.
2. Now you will have to separate the image into 3, each being 612px x 612px and save them separately when you're done.
3. Upload the photos chronologically starting with the photo that will be in the last column first using any hash-tag you desire, I used #virgocomm in the image caption in this example.
4. When you're done uploading the photo-collage of sorts, it will take up the space on Instagram whenever your hash-tag is viewed.

Here is an example of a 1 row x 3 column.

Experimenting With Augmented Reality

2013-01-28T18:20:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone.

Well I have never really played around with interactive print before. I've seen some posts a little while ago on augmented reality but just discovered this new app and how easy it is to create your own.

First of all get this app. It's totally awesome; called Aurasma, what it does is it lets you create an Augmented Reality version of anything you use to trigger it. So you can select a movie or link or whatever and have it open when you view certain print or other triggers.

The Augmented Reality is called an overlay so you have to select one then select a trigger.
In this example I used my business cards to trigger a client reel of the company I work for.

Now, if anyone scans the business cards in Aurasma it will trigger the client reel to start playing like in the below example. I'm guessing in the near future everyone will have interactive business cards and print once people start figuring out the app. Hope everyone downloads this and it becomes a thing, it will add an insane amount of value to print.

Check out my video:

Cloud-Making-Machine

2013-01-24T10:17:00.003-04:00

Cloud-Making Machine Forms Clouds In The Sky, Fights Climate Change

By Anthea Quay, 15 Jan 2013

Multi-disciplinary artist Karolina Sobecka made a personal weather modification device.

Called the ‘Cloud Machine’, the device—consisting of a weather balloon and cloud-making gear—floats up towards the stratosphere to create small clouds, to make subtle alterations to the atmosphere.

When the Cloud Machine reaches a specific altitude, it disperses Cloud Condensation Nuclei (CCN), heat and water vapor.

In turn, the moisture in the air would condense into fog/cloud droplets around the CCN—forming into small clouds.

According to Sobecka, the method was inspired by a “geo-engineering technique proposed to create brighter, more reflective clouds which shield earth from sun’s radiation, and thus partly counteract the climate change.”

via The Cloud Machine, images via Karolina Sobecka

Grab Photoshop and CS2 For Free

2013-01-11T14:50:00.000-04:00

Adobe's giving us all a late Christmas present. You can grab yourself a free, legitimate copy of Photoshop and the rest of the Creative Suite 2, right now, direct from Adobe. Apparently Adobe's tired of keeping the activation servers running to support legitimate installs of the 10-year-old CS2, so it's decided to just give it away. Handy if all you need is a quick image editor, Photoshop CS2 will still do all the basic things, just not the new fancy smart ‘content aware‘ stuff. See Adobe's site here.

Loading flash on Android

2012-12-14T21:00:00.001-04:00

This is a tutorial on how to load flash on your Android device. Flash still runs a bit slow on some connections. the trick still is to keep file-size small. Go here..
Get the flash version that corresponds to your version and download the .apk
In your phone:
1. Use any file browser and install the application
2. open your browser options and check enable plugins.

My Dreams and You

2012-12-07T15:11:00.000-04:00

In case anyone wanted to delve deeper into how and why i'm so interested in my dreams or how i've come about linking the illustrations of people in them to archetypes that I may have mentioned; here's a little insight into how I go about doing things. Jung suggested that the archetypes that appear in all myths and dreams represent the universal aspects of the human mind. Campbell's life work was devoted to sharing the life principles embedded in the structure of stories. He discovered that world hero myths are all basically the same story told in infinitely different ways. Why It Matters: We'll take the hero's journey apart piece by piece and show you how to use it as a map. It will help you understand the stories you read. The below has been edited for ease of understanding i'm guessing. This is not the "real"(Joseph Campell's) hero's journey; however, it's a good place to start. These books will outline the hero's journey in greater detail: See here.

The Archetypes

Hero
Mentor
Threshold Guardian
Herald
Shapeshifter
Shadow
Trickster

The Stages of the Hero's Journey

Act One (first quarter of the story)

Act Two (second and third quarters)

Act Three (fourth quarter)

Via About.com

Sleep Mask Helps You Control Your Dreams

2012-06-15T09:18:00.001-04:00

Brooklyn-based Bitbanger Labs has created a unique sleep mask that helps trigger lucid dreaming so you can control your dreams.

Called ‘Remee’ (REM Enhancing Eye Mask), when users put on the eye mask before they go to bed, the mask will until you’re at the peak of REM sleep (usually 4-5 hours) before flashing customizable LED light patterns for 15-20 seconds every at 15 minutes.

The light patterns won’t be bright enough to wake the user up, but will appear visually in your dreams—to help you recognize that you are dreaming and trigger lucidity.

Remee has a microcontroller and it can be configured to its users preference using a computer.

It is available at US$95 from its website.

via Remee Lucid Dreaming Mask

Real clouds in the middle of the room

2012-03-14T12:49:00.000-04:00

Berndnaut Smilde [via Neatorama]
That's not photoshop; that's an actual cloud hovering inside an actual room. Artist Berndnaut Smilde merges art and science to create small man-made clouds that exist — albeit for just a moment — indoors.
Smilde uses a fog machine to make the actual clouds, but also carefully regulates the humidity and temperature. Even so, these installations exists for a mere moment before dissipating inside the room. If you're not there in the moment, then you only get to experience these brief scientific sculptures as photographs.

Contact Lauren Davis: Email the author

Some Books I Recommend

2012-02-01T11:02:00.000-04:00

Hey Everyone

I have been struggling to think of some good content for the past couple weeks and I have decided to go with some book recommendations. Hoping that maybe you will be more in tune to the symbolism and the methodology of good communication after you have had a read.

These books have helped me in my career on a greater level that I care to admit; bisecting the fields of art and design, so I may perceive the bad from good and make it easier to recognize the liminal.

Here goes:

This is a book about actions, about how actions become gestures and about how gestures transmit messages. Psychologists have long studied what makes people tick. Now Desmond Morris reveals that makes people twitch, stare, grimace, point, poke and shrug. Here is a complete and fascinating catalog of human behavior, closely examined in Morris lively text and hundreds of telling photographs, drawings, and historical prints. In this captivating anthology of body language are the postures, hand gestures, and facial expressions that accompany our true feelings, often hidden under the mask of convention. Here is how we pantomime the meaning beneath our outward behavior in the whole range of social situations. This is the new science of 'Manwatching,' a study that has occupied Desmond Morris for a decade.

Traveling widely, he has collected countless observations of ways people act.. in public and private, in all social contexts, among all ages and both sexes. And more than merely observing, he has categorized this revealing panorama of feeling and desire. But just as the birdwatcher does not study birds in order to shoot them, the Manwatcher seeks to understand, to read the secrets of our unspoken languages. This is the value and delight of the book... a set of keys to human understanding and appreciation that will enlighten and enrich daily life.

Illustrated with 470 photographs, 290 in color, and some 250 drawings, prints and diagrams.

The only complete world mythology textbook available, Introduction to Mythology: Contemporary Approaches to Classical and World Myths, Second Edition, integrates original texts with explanations, interpretations, theory, and numerous pedagogical aids to introduce students to a wide range of myths from various critical perspectives. Featuring texts from sources around the world, it includes readings from Greek and Roman classics (by Homer, Hesiod, Ovid, and other writers); Nordic mythology (by Snorri Sturluson); Hindu culture (The Ramayana); Chinese mythology (Nï¿½ Kwa; new to this edition) and from such ancient works as The Epic of Gilgamesh, the Bible, and the Mesopotamian story of Enuma Elish (new to this edition). Selections from Native-American sources and folktales and stories from Africa, Germany, and the United States are also included. In addition, authors Eva Thury and Margaret Devinney draw comparisons between classical myths and such contemporary cultural phenomena as The X Files, Star Trek, Mother Goose, and, new to this edition, Harry Potter, Stagecoach, and Firefly. They also incorporate readings by Carl Jung, Claude Levi-Strauss, Victor Turner, and other scholars who consider mythic material from different analytical perspectives. Finally, traditional works by writers like John Milton and John Keats as well as those by contemporary authors like Anne Sexton, John Updike, Angela Carter, and James Joyce are presented as examples of literary texts with mythological roots.

Introduction to Mythology uses an innovative pedagogical structure to help students unravel the complex web of literary allusions often found in mythological texts

The most influential unpublished work in the history of psychology. When Carl Jung embarked on an extended self-exploration he called his “confrontation with the unconscious,” the heart of it was The Red Book, a large, illuminated volume he created between 1914 and 1930. Here he developed his principle theories—of the archetypes, the collective unconscious, and the process of individuation—that transformed psychotherapy from a practice concerned with treatment of the sick into a means for higher development of the personality.

While Jung considered The Red Book to be his most important work, only a handful of people have ever seen it. Now, in a complete facsimile and translation, it is available to scholars and the general public. It is an astonishing example of calligraphy and art on a par with The Book of Kells and the illuminated manuscripts of William Blake. This publication of The Red Book is a watershed that will cast new light on the making of modern psychology.
212 color illustrations.

Illustrated throughout with revealing images, this is the first and only work in which the world-famous Swiss psychologist explains to the layperson his enormously influential theory of symbolism as revealed in dreams.

This extraordinary best-seller is a brilliant evocation of the noted scholar's teachings on mythology.

Book offers additional insight into interpeting dreams not covered by other books.

The word symbol is derived from the Greek, symbolon, and is a graphic sign for an idea, concept, or object. The oldest were of the five basic elements: fire, water, earth, sun, and wind, which evolved into elaborate Egyptian hieroglyphics. Despite alphabets and languages, symbols continue to develop and evolve in every culture. Featuring over 300 color photographs, Symbols looks at the meaning of over 1,000 signs, categorized into esoteric, ideology, philosophy, religion, and science.

My Journals

2010-11-09T15:36:00.001-04:00

Well as of now I have a couple projects going on:

My dream journal has been updated over the past year, so if any Psyche majors or people interested in dreams want to have a look, feel free and you may suggest or comment with any similar instances or feedback...i call it the "Even Newer Testament."

Or if you're more experienced in symbolism suggest your theories.

Also...rumor has it there is a new species of cloud, The Royal Meteorological Society is willing to look into it if more people can spot them an give scientific data about the atmosphere any time the clouds appear.

I dont have the tools for that, so i took to photographing the cloudy sky on a daily basis in hopes that I may one day spot this new species....They are used for my post images on my website that lives here.

Compositing

2010-03-27T19:09:00.000-04:00

This is my demo reel!
Short Promo Vid!
Coloring in Photoshop!
Color correction!
Short promo!

Typography

2010-02-01T03:10:00.000-04:00

3d Animation & Video

2009-10-29T20:38:00.000-04:00

This is using After Effects to create a kaleidoscope of fruit!

A blue screen shot of a woman's head and hands are composited into a shot of a pc and then key'd and tracked.

This shot is using the stabalize feature in one of my programs.

This shot emcompasses all the techniques of compositing and includes 3d; video, graphics and motion.

This is a scene built using .pngs

This scene is using an animated mask to rotoscope a glow effect.

Built in After Effects and then animated.

Animated logo for the School of Communication Arts program; Digital Media Art, with a fog effect and light motion in 3dsmax.

Built using particle systems in 3dsmax.

Animation using a model made from a box, bent and stretched and then rigged to explode!

A logo built with flies to give effect!

A crane animated using hierarchical linkage in 3dsmax.

60 Sec Gestures

2009-10-29T00:00:00.000-04:00

Hey

This is artwork involving the sketching of a model's gesture every 60 seconds, it helps me discover the flow of anatomy... Enjoy!

Backstory(ansonaswat.com)

2009-03-28T02:35:00.000-04:00

This is the original design

of my website from 2010.

flash Version

Slowlife(shutter..LOL)

2009-02-19T02:21:00.001-04:00

I've been really enjoying my Digi-Photoraphy projects, i always had a thing for playing with light, last time i had this much fun was shadow-puppet shows :D

Skateboard designs

2008-11-21T17:19:00.001-04:00

Here are some designs I've been working on...for the skateboard LoL!

...this one is edited in CS3

Toy characters

2008-11-01T22:43:00.000-04:00

Judah

Hey everyone, This project is toy creation out of super-sculpy. Judah;

Ganeshi

here are some pre-design models out of plasticine, just to get a rough idea of the designs i'm working with. Also, some vector artwork i got from the web as inspiration.

super sculpy Judah. I have went along with Judah over Ganeshi. No particular reason, They will both need there strength for the battle :)

Gi Japanese Menu

2008-10-10T15:54:00.001-04:00

a project involving soya sauce, a menu an less than 2 hours.

a mockup for a menu with a japanese theme