The network for creativity
Join 1.25M professional creatives like you
Connect with clients, get discovered, and run your business 100% commission-free
Creatives on Contra have earned over $150M and we are just getting started
Back to feedPost
šļø Someone you love is dying. There's a cure on a mountain hundreds of miles away. You don't know which herb it is. So you carry the entire mountain back.
That's not a metaphor. That's the Ramayana.
š SANJEEVANI: THE NIGHT DEVOTION MOVED MOUNTAINS ā my submission for the FLORA Museum Challenge.
I started with "Hanuman Bearing the Mountaintop with Medicinal Herbs" (ca. 1800, Rajasthan) ā a massive devotional painting from The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Open Access archive. It captures Hanuman's most famous act: flying across India carrying Mount Dronagiri to save the dying Lakshmana.
The Met's painting freezes this story in one frame. I unfolded it into five.
š©ø THE WOUND ā On the battlefield of Lanka, Lakshmana falls. Rama kneels beside his brother. The physician says only the Sanjeevani herb from the Himalayas can save him ā and it must arrive before sunrise.
š THE LEAP ā Hanuman steps forward. He grows to colossal size and launches into the night sky with a force that parts the ocean. The earth cracks beneath him.
šæ THE MOUNTAIN ā He lands on Dronagiri. Thousands of herbs glow with bioluminescent light in the moonlit darkness ā teals, blues, golds, greens. He cannot identify the Sanjeevani among them. Time is running out. Dawn creeps onto the horizon. And then ā the decision that echoed through millennia.
āļø THE FLIGHT BACK ā Hanuman carries the entire mountain on his palm, flying across the Indian night sky. Luminous herbs fall from the peak and trail behind him like a bioluminescent comet tail ā a river of healing light streaming through the stars. The Ramayana says herbs fell along his flight path, and where they landed, medicinal plants still grow today.
š
THE HEALING ā Dawn breaks. The mountain sits glowing on the battlefield. Lakshmana breathes again. Rama embraces his brother. And Hanuman stands apart, head bowed, hands folded in prayer. He does not celebrate. His work was service, not spectacle.
Each panel was built on FLORA and animated into a cinematic sequence ā from the darkest night to the most golden dawn.
The Rajasthani painters captured this story in one frame 200 years ago. I needed five ā because some acts of devotion deserve to be witnessed in motion.
"Where in all the three worlds will I find another brother like Lakshmana?" ā Lord Rama
Original artwork:
Hanuman Bearing the Mountaintop with Medicinal Herbs, ca. 1800
Ink and opaque watercolor on cloth | India (Rajasthan)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Built with @floraai
#FLORAMuseum #FLORA #TheMet #Hanuman #Ramayana #Sanjeevani #IndianArt #SanatanDharma #AIArt #DigitalArt
Source Piece: Hanuman Bearing the Mountaintop with Medicinal Herbs (ca. 1800, Rajasthan
Thanks
stunning.
Thanks
The network for creativity
Join 1.25M professional creatives like you
Connect with clients, get discovered, and run your business 100% commission-free
Creatives on Contra have earned over $150M and we are just getting started
Trending
retrofuturism
Share your favorite designs from the past exploring the distant future. Or your own take on the aesthetic š
halftone
Dots. Texture. Grain. Let's see your designs using the halftone technique.
Midjourney
Creatives are showing off what they're making with Midjourney.
colorgrade
Video editors sound off: How do you enhance the mood of your video in color grading?
Related posts
Our entry for the @FLORA Museum Challenge!
We picked Eirene, the personification of Peace, from The Met.
The idea was simple: when we look at a piece of art, we all imagine something different.
So we played with that. Different people looking at the same sculpture, each one creating their own version of it in their head!
This is great!! Don't forget to include your Met reference link too!
Inspired by: Grere'o (Shield), Solomon Islands, early-to-mid 19th century, from The Met's open archive.
Link to Original Art : https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/310073
I liked this shield because of its beautiful pattern and shine. It has a detailed design with a human figure in the middle, made from woven cane and shiny shell pieces. It looked like something made to be seen, not just used.
What I made: I turned the shield into a surfboard, but kept its design exactly the same, same pattern, same shine, same figure. I only changed its shape into a board. I picked a surfboard because its long shape already matches the shield's shape, so it felt like a natural change.
How I made it: I downloaded the Sheild image from Met's open archive, then imported the sheild picture in flora , connected picture with text prompt node, then I connected both picture and text prompt node to the video node and I selected the seedance 2.5 model with 30sec clip, I kept the work flow simple because I am new to flora and I was afraid maybe I may use all the credits before even creating good video, add this in how I made it
Why I made this: I wanted to take this design out of the museum and give it a new life in something people can use and see in motion. I think the shield's pattern is still beautiful enough to belong in The Met today, just now on a different object.
Instagram post link: https://www.instagram.com/p/Dc3Nn8IAT2O/
Twitter(X) post link: https://x.com/AhmadSauleh/status/2095827847915163648?s=20
ā¢ Sep 4
Such a clean fusion of culture and modern sport! Did you encounter any issues getting FLORA to keep the intricate shell pattern consistent across different camera angles
THE SWEEPER'S LOOP ā a #FLORAMuseum submission
ORIGINAL WORK: One sketch from an album titled Painting, by Shibata Zeshin (Japanese, 1807ā1891), Meiji period, 19th-century Japan. Housed at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, accession number 52.160.3aāq ā an album of seventeen watercolor sketches on paper, mounted on natural silk, image area 11 x 14 in. (27.9 x 35.6 cm). Held in the Museum's Asian Art department, credited as a Purchase, Gifts, Bequests, and Funds from various donors, by exchange, 1952. Classified under Paintings.
WHAT DREW ME IN: An elderly man caught mid-stride, bent low, sweeping the ground with a bundled twig broom. His face is drawn with just a few wrinkled lines ā a furrowed brow, a hollow cheek, a short beard ā yet it carries the full weight of a lifetime of quiet, repetitive labor. The background is almost nothing: aged beige paper, empty space, just the man, his broom, and a small scatter of leaves at his feet. A red artist's seal marks the corner. It's Zeshin's economy of line that stopped me ā how much life he gets from how little ink.
WHAT I MADE: I couldn't stop wondering what happened right after this frame. Did he finish? Did the wind undo his work the moment he was done? So I built an 8-frame looping animation that keeps Zeshin's exact palette, brushwork, and restraint ā the man sweeps, gathers the leaves, wipes his brow in relief... and then a gust of ink-line wind scatters everything right back where it started. He sighs, and begins again. A single sketch turned into an eternal, gently comic loop of labor that never quite ends.
WHY: Zeshin's sketch already holds a whole story in one still gesture. I just wanted to give that gesture time ā to see the sweep before and after the moment he chose to capture, and to find the small, human joke hiding in it: the work of sweeping is never really finished.
Built on FLORA. Inspired by The Met's public archive.
@floraai #FLORAMuseum
Project https://app.flora.ai/view/js7f6v9tp6150kk7wmaeg2sfb18drna4
Original https://metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/57329
This is really nice