Floor796 is an animated web site that was developed solely by one internet programmer who maintains it in his free time.
The web site depicts, in unimaginable element, life on an area station. The scene is on a 60-frame loop that repeats each 5 seconds. The characters, props, and units are closely impressed by popular culture from the Nineteen Eighties by means of at this time, and it’s straightforward to get misplaced navigating the 32 rooms that make up the scene.
That quantity, 32, shouldn’t be mounted. In truth, the positioning’s developer Pavel Sannikau is at all times engaged on new rooms for floor796.
Sannikau is a 36-year-old internet programmer residing in Belarus with no training or coaching in illustration or animation. He’s only a die-hard fan.
He began drawing temporary animated clips in 2012 as a pastime. Earlier than that, he briefly fooled round with recreation growth in Adobe Flash however ultimately switched to drawing animated gifs like these seen right here.
His pursuits and the pressures of the actual world pushed Sannikau into software program growth, and for almost 5 years he stopped drawing altogether… till he had the thought for floor796.
We just lately reached out and requested Sannikau to speak us by means of growing the instruments he makes use of to create the positioning’s animation, what goes into creating on of the area station’s rooms, and the way he picks his subject material.
Pavel Sannikau, floor796 Creator:
Inspiration
I needed to attract, and I needed to program. I thought of making a recreation, however now the world of recreation growth is just too sophisticated and there’s a lot of competitors, so I made a decision to do one thing utterly new. That’s how the thought got here as much as create a challenge during which there can be lots of small animations with a standard type and that means, with new items consistently being added.
From the Floor Up
Earlier than this challenge, I labored with numerous graphic editors similar to Adobe Flash, 3D Studio Max, Photoshop, and so forth. All of them are fantastic, however they’re paid and don’t final eternally. By nature, I attempt to be much less depending on others. For instance, in programming, I attempt to use much less dependent libraries. Since I made a decision to make a challenge that may endure for years to return, I made a decision to put in writing my very own animation editor as its foundation, which is able to specialise in precisely the type that this challenge wants: projection, colour palette, instruments, variety of frames, transformations, and so forth. Due to the event of my editor, I can shortly draw within the desired type. In some other editor, I must do lots of further work to keep up such a projection and magnificence.
Creating the instrument took me about one 12 months. I did it as a pet challenge in my free time. However now and again, I nonetheless make enhancements on it relying on what I believe I’ll want within the subsequent block I’m planning. For instance, after I began drawing a block with a pool, I wanted a instrument to create a wave impact. Right here is a hyperlink to a demo of the instrument.
For this challenge, I developed my very own video format and my very own format for storing drawn scenes. My video format is one of the best for this animation as a result of it really works with this colour palette, body price, and different animation options. You’ll be able to learn extra about how the video format is in-built this text (though it’s in Russian).
Alas, this editor in its present kind can’t be used for different functions than drawing scenes within the floor796 challenge. Nevertheless, if desired, the work will be modified and exported to any in style format (gif, webp, apng, mp4, and so forth.).
The Course of
To start out, this challenge has no ahead planning. As a rule, within the strategy of drawing one scene I’m desirous about what I’ll draw subsequent. That is how this challenge continues, step-by-step. Most frequently, no matter involves my thoughts can be drawn additional.
The complete animation is split into equal-sized sections (rooms). I name them blocks. I broaden the challenge every time I add one other block to a distinct facet of the general scene. Thus, the ground of the area station step by step expands in all instructions.
I attempt to make every block with its personal theme: a hospital, a kitchen, a park, a fitness center, and so forth. Now I’m drawing a block with a small energy plant, after which I wish to draw a double block with a police station. It takes a mean of 1 month to attract every block. To this point, I’ve completed 32 blocks. As a rule, I begin drawing a brand new block from a sketch. I plan what can be in it, what characters will seem, and the place they are going to be positioned. Then I draw the partitions, the ground, and the tools. After that, I begin drawing the characters in phases and work on how they work together contained in the block. As quickly as I’m completed drawing a personality or group of characters, I do an replace of the primary web page. Thus, the challenge is up to date each 2-4 days.
The completed animation, which is proven on the primary web page, is constructed within the following approach:
- Particular person block components are drawn: characters, partitions, ground, and so forth. All of them are saved as separate scenes with their very own layers. At the moment, there are greater than 6000 layers within the challenge.
- All components of 1 block are mixed into one scene, which in the long run is a block. All layers of the block are merged collectively and the ultimate set of frames of 1 block is rendered in PNG format.
- All rendered blocks are mixed into one frequent scene which is what will be seen on the primary web page.
- This bigger scene is minimize into 508×406 items, and every bit is packed right into a particular video format.
- Within the browser, every fragment is individually loaded and rendered to the display screen in a separate CPU thread.
Selecting A Topic
Once I’m desirous about which characters to incorporate has been troublesome from the beginning. I needed to synchronize numerous animations with one another. However after drawing perhaps my first 50 characters, it turned a lot simpler and now I nearly don’t take into consideration synchronization in any respect or how one can loop the plot in 60 frames.
