Lucid Dreaming - Documentary

Although I am very familiar with the concept of Lucid Dreaming, I decided to spend some time researching other people's experiences, in order to see if this would give me any further ideas to go towards my animation. Whilst researching, I came across a Youtube Documentary called "The Lucid Dreamer" from a guy named Charley Morley who is a Lucid Dream teacher.

During this documentary there were certain facts that came up that I had no idea about. Not only did this influence my work, believe it or not it actually taught me a things or two about lucid dreaming & as a result this allowed me to lucid dream for longer and more frequently through out the production of this film!

Some of the key things I picked up from this documentary were:

• The hand test - in order to determine for sure if you are asleep or awake, you should look at the palm of your hands, look away and then look at them again. Whilst you sleep, the part of your brain that remembers fine details is not engaged, therefore if you are dreaming, your hands will look different the second time around. 
• Maintaining Dream Control - The key to maintaining a Lucid Dream is to not get over excited. You should stay calm and acknowledge that you are dreaming out loud, that way you are more likely to stay in the dream for longer. 

How did this benefit my work?

Once of the most helpful aspects that came from this documentary was being able to learn how to maintain dream control. Because of this I was then able to consciously take in my surroundings & be aware of how vivid they were. This has resulted in me having a better idea of how I want to represent the surrounding environments in my animation. I want them to be detailed & intriguing, however I will be using quite a narrow colour palette, in order to prevent there being too much for the audience to take in.