Śrī Śrī Gaura-Nitāi 3D Characters Part I
About This Project
Our first 3d characters are here! And They are none other than the propagators of Yuga-dharma, Śrī Kṛṣṇa Caitanya and Śrī Nityānanda Prabhu!
Lord Caitanya and Lord Nityānanda, who are non-different from Śrī Kṛṣṇa and Śrī Balarāma, or Lord Rāmacandra and Śrī Lakṣmana, appeared in Navadvīpa, West Bengal in the 15th century to propagate the universal religion of this age, the congregational chanting of the Holy Names. They were both uncommonly beautiful, as evidenced from such descriptions as:
“The Lord’s charming looks easily overshadowed the attractiveness of millions of cupids. I am at a loss to find the appropriate similes to describe the beauty of the Lord, yet I venture to do so by His mercy alone. Otherwise, who would dare to attempt such an impossible task? He glowed like a mountain of gold, His body being smeared with sandal paste sometimes looked like the rising full moon. His curly dark tresses were decorated with fragrant malati garlands; a sweet smile clung intimately to His lips that could surely win the hearts of all the muses. Sandalwood tilaka with a red dot of vermilion clearly adorned His beautiful broad forehead. Chanting the name of Hari, He raised His arms up in the sky and danced. The knee-length flower garland around His neck swayed with each movement. His upraised arms glistened like fine tapering pillars of gold…”
Śrī Caitanya Bhāgavata by Śrīla Vṛndāvana Dāsa Ṭhākura, Madhya-khanda, Ch.23)
Just as it is not possible to fully describe the Lord’s beauty, it is also not possible to adequately replicate it in art. All we can do is pray and try humbly and sincerely. I can’t say I was fully happy with the degree of refinement for Their faces, but had to stop somewhere and be satisfied with this first project before moving on! The facial features will be more refined when designing expressions and rigging the face.
Big shoutouts and many thanks to Julien Kaspar @julienkaspart for the Stylized Character Workflow course on Blender Cloud and Dikko @dikko_art for the Modeling for Animation series on YouTube! Sincerely, without you guys we wouldn’t be anywhere near completing our characters. We will keep learning and benefitting from your tutorials in the future! We also used numerous other tutorials for small details, they are saved in our Reference playlist on YouTube.
Made from scratch fully in Blender 2.91 (sorry, haven’t upgraded yet ;-). Posed with Mixamo, so some deformations are not ideal (we are just about to start learning rigging.) Rendered in Cycles, 256 samples. Polygon count per character (without clothes and decorations): 7,300. Estimated time taken to create Them in 3d – at least 70-80 hours (learning curve included). Landscape is also ours made from scratch, but not much refined as the main focus was the characters.
See Part II, featuring Lord Nityānanda HERE
We are also preparing a blog post on the process of making these characters, which will be linked HERE as soon as ready!