Dream Journal

It was tiring. I ran continuously for an hour in the jungle. My chest went up and down as I stopped running after arriving at our designated stop near a hut. My eyes began to look around after five minutes of resting and stabilizing my breath. There was a bag on top of the bush behind me. “Looks like my sister’s bag!” I tried to open it to find some water to quench my thirst. Nothing wrong right?

Suddenly, the bag flied towards me and covered me from the top! I was suffocating at first. When I began calming myself, I realized I was in a completely different world! A snowy yet warm land! My eyes were drawn towards the tallest tower in the nearby city. It’s Petronas Twin Towers, and it was snowing! That was fascinating. I always hoped to play snow in Malaysia! A city near the equator should never get snow, but where else does that tower can be? I know my country’s landmark very much.

Am I dreaming? I tried to pinch myself to check whether I was dreaming or not. Hmm… I didn’t feel any pain. Suddenly, I was completely in dark. Oh, I’m just on my bed…

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This narrative was created based on my personal experience and other fictional stories. The snowy Malaysia was originated from my dream, which is represented by the snowy land and the Petronas Twin Towers. The idea of a fantasy-like land in a bag was originated from Doraemon animation series, which Doraemon’s pocket contains many things which I can imagine that it contains another world.

Four different images shown below were used to create the above surrealist dream art.

I used Adobe Photoshop to create the composite image. The following screenshots demonstrate each layer and process of creating the final image. The background of the forest was first placed as the bottom layer.Then, a black and white gradient layer was added on top of the background layer to adjust the contrast, especially the outer radius of the forest image. This technique may create more depth effect of the forest, as if someone is looking upwards.Next, the image of the bag was added at the top. The background of the bag was erased using background eraser tool. After that, the inside of the bag was erased using mask on that layer. Smooth and big brush tool was used to quickly adjust the opacity at the edges.A black solid layer was added on top of the bag layer to increase the darkness of the bag. Mask was used to make sure that only the black part of the bag was darkened. The opacity was also adjusted accordingly. The snowy image layer was added below the layer of the bag and on top of the forest layer.An image of the city was also added as a layer on top of the snow layer and below the bag layer.The sky background of the city was removed by applying mask on the layer, and using black and white brush tool.A copy of the snow layer on top of the city layer was created and the sky background was removed using selection tool. The two layers of the snow and the city were grouped, and a mask layer was used for the group to make sure the edges of the layers were within the bag. The location of the group was also adjusted accordingly.