Thread: Task of the Month for August 2014

Okay, DJ is up!
Here are the task excerpts.
I just realised that without context, it might sound weird that the dream begins with CanisLucidus in my bed, haha.

Spoiler for Eyeball task:

The first was Advanced Task i - Pull your eyeball out and examine it. I had tried and failed this one previously, so I was determined to get it right. I didn't doubt myself this time, I just dug my fingers straight in and pulled my eyeball right out. The room was almost completely dark though, so I couldn't see much. I got out of bed and focused on forming visuals like Sageous had suggested, and the room quickly became lit. I could see the eyeball now, which was still attached by the optic nerve. It was slightly bigger than it should have been and a bit cartoon-like, perfectly round, and a bit slimy.
CanisLucidus got out of bed too, and came towards me. I was a bit worried that he was going to bump me and cause the optic nerve to snap, so I held out my hand to get him to keep his distance a bit. He sensed my worry and decided to play a practical joke. He started teasing me by intentionally bumping into me lightly - not enough to do any damage, but enough to make me have to concentrate on holding onto my detached eyeball for dear life.
The optic nerve was only just long enough for me to see the eyeball, not to turn it around to look at myself, so I walked over to the full length mirror in my room. My reflection was very accurate, and I could see my eye dangling out of an empty socket.
Canis came up and embraced me affectionately from behind. There were some residual feelings from the non-lucid dream, but I got on with the task while he was holding me. He seemed interested to watch the task in progress.
I pulled my eyeball out further and watched in the mirror as the optic nerve drooped down. I wanted to look back at myself, but my vision still seemed to be coming from its usual perspective, so I closed the eye that was still in my head. My vision was sort of halfway between the two eyes. It wasn't coming from my head's perspective anymore, it was a little way out from my body, but not far enough to be from the detached eye, and it was facing off to the side in a different direction to where the eye was facing. I tried looking around and the feeling of movement was coming from the empty socket, but my vision responded from pretty close to the position of the eye I was holding. The edges of my vision were a bit blurred, and I couldn't quite get the angle far enough to see myself.
I opened my other eye again and the room went kind of dark. I popped my other eye back in, but it didn't help with my vision. The room was still dimly lit and I could see Canis standing there, grinning.

Spoiler for Photoshop task:

I decided to move onto the Bonus Task - Apply a Photoshop effect to your dream scene.
I told CanisLucidus, "I'm going to try making everything black and white."
I closed my eyes and opened them again, but nothing changed. I tried pointing my finger in the air and flicking it like a wand to remove the colours, but that didn't work either. I decided to move on to another effect instead. I had already tried increasing the saturation in a previous LD but it only had a minimal effect. I wanted to try again to get this right. The room was still very dull, so I had a good starting point to work with. I made a motion with my hand as though I was winding a round knob on a professional colour grading system. I turned it as far as I could with one hand movement, and the saturation of my scene increased significantly. I did this winding motion a couple more times and the colours in the room became more vivid each time. The room was still only dimly lit, so I decided to try bringing up the brightness as well. I held my hand out flat with my palm facing up, and raised my hand higher. The brightness of the room increased as I did this, and the image became grainier, just as it would if I was correcting a photo in waking life. I fiddled with another dial to increase the contrast slightly and get the picture looking sharper. There was still a shadow covering Canis' face, so I focused on that area and used a spotlight effect to light him up.

Full dream