Śrī Sudarśana Mini Animated Short
About This Project
Śrī Sudarśana is the favorite disk weapon of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Śrī Viṣṇu, or Śrī Kṛṣṇa. This short animated film, which was one of our first practices of simple animation, is made for his glorification. Being a spiritual weapon, Sudarśana also has a personality of his own, and he always lovingly serves the Lord, helping Him to kill envious and demoniac persons and to protect His devotees. The effulgence of Sudarśana gives light to the Sun and the Moon, and his revolutions represent the movement of Time. Depending on the situation, he may appear mild and beautiful, or fierce and terrifying.
While we were still waiting to upgrade our hardware, this slightly-over-2-minute animated short took over a month of almost constant rendering, due to complicated materials and shaders and many lights in the scenes.
Main Blender skills practiced: camera angles and movements, lighting, emission and glass shaders, rendering fire and particles, movements along tracks, video editing and compositing, matching animation with scores.
To accomplish this project we learned a lot from Blender tutorials by Andrew Price aka Blender Guru on rendering fire and particles, as well as from forums at blenderartists.org
Made fully with Blender 2.91, rendered in Cycles, 128 samples. Average render times: 20-40 minutes per frame.
See still shots from the animation HERE and some of our traditional art featuring Śrī Sudarśana HERE
CREDITS
Text based on Srimad Bhagavatam Canto 9 Chapter 5, translated by His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, copyright by Bhaktivedanta Book Trust International, www.krishna.com, retrieved from www.vedabase.io
Music: Anton Bruckner Symphony 1 Part 3 Scherzo Vivace. Performed by Austrian State Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Andreae Volkmar, circa 1950. Retrieved from www.imslp.org
This film is made for non-commercial/study purposes.