This essay presents the creative process and discusses the final outcome of the author’s thesis project – a 3-dimensional digital animated short film entitled "Dreamland." The story of this animation is set in a fictive world, which is situated between the fantasy and the reality. The author tries to present the animation in a style of fairy tale, which is achieved through the use of a digital technique imitating the hue of water color that allows colors to move fluently on screen, thus making the audience feel like reading a children''s picture book.

The first chapter of this essay discusses the motivation behind, and the author’s goal of, creating this animated work. The second chapter elaborates on the theme of the animation and reviews the literature of psychoanalysis, in which several scholars theorized how people deal with inner conflicts when compromising one’s own goal in order to conform to the demand from a group into which (s)he tries to integrate. The author also discusses in this chapter how characters in several feature and animated films resolve such conflicts and/or achieve a compromise. The third chapter presents the idea and story outline, as well as discusses the design of characters, background setting, and the reference materials of the animation. The forth chapter describes the production process of the thesis animation and the difficulties the author had encountered, as well as the adjustment she made in order to complete the work. Finally, the author made a self-critique in the fifth chapter, hoping to avoid making the similar mistakes in the future works.