Ground 796 It’s a web site developed completely by a single net programmer who maintains it totally free.
The web site provides an enchanting have a look at life on the area station. The scene is on a 60-frame cycle that repeats each 5 seconds. The characters, props and units are impressed by popular culture from the Nineteen Eighties to right now, and it is simple to navigate by way of the 32 episodes that make up the scene.
That quantity, 32, will not be mounted. In fact, the location’s developer, Pavel Sannikau, is all the time engaged on new elements for floor796.
Sannikau is a 36-year-old net programmer dwelling in Belarus with no schooling or coaching in graphics or animation. He is only a die-hard fan.
Within the yr In 2012, he began drawing quick animation clips as a pastime. Earlier than that, he briefly dabbled with sport growth in Adobe Flash, however ultimately switched to drawing animated gifs like those seen right here.
His passions and the pressures of the true world pushed Sannika into software program growth and he stopped drawing fully for 5 years… till he got here up with the concept for Floor796.
We not too long ago caught up with Sannicau to speak in regards to the instruments he makes use of to create the location’s animations, what occurs contained in the area station’s rooms, and the way he chooses his material.
Pavel Sannikau, floor796 Creator:
Inspiration.
I needed to attract, and I needed to program. I considered making a sport, however now that the world of sport growth is so difficult and so aggressive, I made a decision to do one thing new. That is how the concept got here to create a mission the place many small animations with a typical model and which means are added frequently.
From the bottom up

Earlier than this mission I’ve labored with totally different graphic editors like Adobe Flash, 3D Studio Max, Photoshop, and many others. They’re all nice however they’re paid and do not final eternally. By nature I are likely to rely on others. For instance, in programming, I attempt to use minimally dependent libraries. Since I made a decision to work on a mission that can final for years, I made a decision to put in writing my very own animation editor, which defines precisely the model that this mission wants, projection, shade palette, instruments, variety of frames, transformations, and many others. Because of the event of my editor, I can rapidly draw within the desired model. In another editor, I’ve to do much more work to take care of such a projection and magnificence.
Creating system It took me a few yr. I did it as a pet mission in my spare time. However every so often, I nonetheless make modifications primarily based on what I believe I would like for the following block I am planning. For instance, after I began to attract a block with a pool, I wanted a software to create a wave impact. over right here Here’s a hyperlink to the system demo.
For this mission I developed my very own video format and my very own format for storing drawn scenes. My video format is the most effective for this animation as a result of it really works with this shade palette, body charge, and different animation options. You’ll be able to learn extra about how the video format was developed. This column (although in Russian).
Alas, this editor in its present kind can’t be used for functions apart from drawing scenes within the floor796 mission. But when desired, the work may be edited and despatched to any common format (gif, webp, apng, mp4, and many others.).
The method
To start with, this mission has no future plans. As a rule, within the means of portray a scene, I am fascinated with what I will paint subsequent. It is a step-by-step method to the mission. Normally, no matter involves my thoughts is extra fascinating.
Your entire animation is split into equal-sized elements (elements). I name it a block. Each time I add one other block to a different aspect of the entire scene, I develop the mission. Due to this fact, the floor of the area station regularly expands in all instructions.
I attempt to make every block with its personal theme: hospital, kitchen, park, health club and so forth. Proper now I am 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 color every block. I’ve accomplished 32 blocks thus far. As a rule, I begin drawing a brand new block from the diagram. I plan what’s going to occur in it, what characters will seem and the place they are going to be positioned. Then I paint the partitions, the ground and the tools. After that I begin drawing the characters step-by-step and work out how they work together inside the block. As quickly as I end drawing a personality or group of characters, I’ll replace the primary web page. So the mission is up to date each 2-4 days.
The completed animation proven on the primary web page was created as follows.
- Particular person block parts are drawn: characters, partitions, flooring, and many others. are all positioned on their very own layers as separate scenes. Presently there are greater than 6000 layers within the mission.
- All parts of a block are mixed into one scene, which is the final block. All of the block layers are merged collectively and the ultimate set of frames of a block is rendered in PNG format.
- All modeled blocks are mixed into a typical scene which is displayed on the primary web page.
- This massive scene is minimize into 508×406 items, and every bit is loaded right into a particular video format.
- Within the browser, every partition is loaded right into a separate CPU thread and rendered to the display screen.
Selecting a topic
It was tough from the start after I considered which characters to incorporate. I needed to synchronize totally different animations with one another. However possibly after I drew the primary 50 characters, it turned a lot simpler and now I by no means take into consideration synchronization or the best way to flip the plot in 60 frames.

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