Dream Defenders is an animated comedy-action short celebrating the power of plushies and getting over your fears. A trio of scrappy yet lovable plushies, known as the Dream Defenders, must fight off nightmares and save their frightened kid, Sammy. They must figure out a way to rescue him from the fearsome being causing these terrors. Tonight, their kid dreams of a terrifying circus.

Director Biography

Nicole Nowel is a first generation Polish-American animator based and born in Chicago. She attended DePaul University, graduating in 2025 with a BFA in Animation and created Dream Defenders at age 22. Nicole mainly creates bold and playful 2D animated work heavily inspired by the style of early 2000s cartoons, but she also enjoys creating mixed media work, such as paper stop motion. She was a storyboarding mentee under a highly selective storyboarding training program led by Nickelodeon directors and has done storyboarding freelance work for an unannounced project. Nicole aims to continue to work on animated projects on a larger scale and plans to create more stories centered around her characters. See more work by her under the handle @squidblush on most social media platforms, such as Instagram and Youtube.

Director Statement

Dream Defenders was inspired by my childhood plushies and how they have brought me comfort throughout the scarier times in my life. Plushies were always a positive influence for me even to this day, and I’m sure many can say the same. As a kid, I had frequent paranoia and terrible nightmares, so having a plush to hug when I would wake up gave me a sense of safety. I actually based Pup, one of the Dream Defenders, off of this little brown puppy plushie I was so emotionally attached to as a kid that I would not sleep or go anywhere without it. I wanted to dive in deeper with this idea that plushies can offer us a sense of protection from the potentially alarming thoughts our minds can go through at night, and maybe make these fears seem less scary.