The Story Behind the Monsters

When my boys were young — around eight or nine — our living room was a battlefield. Pokémon, Digimon, Monster Rancher, and most of all Yu-Gi-Oh! — card games and board games we played for hours on end. We even built our own Yu-Gi-Oh! arm-card holders out of plywood, plexiglass, and elastic bands. They were ridiculously massive. Worth every minute.

We played those games so much that, eventually, the boys started inventing monsters of their own. Crayons, colored pencils, scraps of paper — and a name they came up with themselves: Dream Monsters. We never turned the artwork into a game; they didn't need us to. They just loved creating them.

The artwork was amazing — full parental bias acknowledged — but more than that, it was awesome to watch my boys use their own imaginations to build a whole world of monsters that nobody else knew about.

Back then, I started sketching out a vision for a website — one that was 100% safe for kids — where my boys could show off their creations, and where other kids could do the same. Affordable. Trustworthy. Fun. Then life happened, and the idea sat on a shelf for two decades.

Fast forward all those years, and I still couldn't shake the feeling that this was something kids would love being part of — a fun, artistic, inspirational place that celebrates the creative potential of children, lets them share their work with friends, family, classmates, or the world, and does it safely.

So I pulled the proverbial Nerf-gun trigger. And here we are.

More important than anything, this site is built on trust. Artwork can be private and invite-only, or open to anyone in the world to see — that choice belongs to the parent. Either way, every monster gets reviewed before it appears in a public gallery, and there are no open comments or chat to police.

I hope My Dream Monsters brings as much fun to your kids as monster-making brought to mine — who, for the record, were born in the mid-90s and are now grown men still fond of card games.