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Appreciation For All Things ASCII

Posted by timothy on from the what's-wrong-with-chunky dept.

AsciiRock writes "Sick of seeing those chunky pixel art logos everywhere? Check out AsciiBlog, Contemporary ASCII, and Ascii Disko (no relation to me) for examples of artists inspired by plain text. ...and also click me! and click me! which made their way around the net some time back. Wonder how many other examples of BBS design sensibility there'll be this year. There's already Wired illustrators. 2002, year of ASCII design?"

10 of 241 comments (clear)

  1. One of the great ASCII artists: by Peeing+Calvin · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Veronica Karlsson

    She may not be the best, but she's darn good. And she has some cool nude self-portraits ;-).

  2. Don't forget ASCIIMATION STAR WARS by CyberSlugGump · · Score: 5, Interesting

    http://www.asciimation.co.nz/ requires a java-enabled browser, though I'm pretty sure a telent version somewhere....

    1. Re:Don't forget ASCIIMATION STAR WARS by houseofmore · · Score: 5, Funny

      "....http://www.asciimation.co.nz/ requires a java-enabled browser"

      It's a sad sad day when you need to install java to view ascii :(

  3. If you like ascii prepare to be blown away... by MrLint · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Apple has a little known utility that will play qucktime movies thru an ascii renderer (or something) and into the terminal app. Its only on monochrome, but watching movie trailers thru it is just wild.

  4. Cool post, lame sites by ninjadroid · · Score: 5, Informative

    Well, I couldn't really evaluate the blog, as it was in a non-english language, or the sites requiring Flash and/or Java, as I have neither. That said, the sites I could peruse weren't all that great. Contemporary Ascii was nothing but a bunch of links to a medical site (?), and Ascii Disko was some dude's music site.

    Really, what the hell? Where's all the kick-ass Ascii art?

  5. I got the prefect anti-slashdot idea... by skermit · · Score: 5, Interesting

    PHP protect all your pages so if a counter increments by a certain count within a certain amount of time (say 30 mins or an hour) for the next 2 hours, it will remove all of the inline images, run them through an ascii-art converter, and replace it, so you're transferring at most a couple kilobytes of text which is gzip compressable through most browsers now and checks every 2 hours until the slashdot (or fark, or k5, or memebutt) effect subsides... Any techheads wanna get crackin'?

    --
    -Christopher Wu
    http://www.christopherwu.net/
  6. The power apps... by EverStoned · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If you're wondering how loads of those ascii-pictures are made, check out BG_ASCII. It's a wonderful program (Yes, it can convert JPG to ASCII), and by the looks of things, this is what they used. If you're loooking to do original ASCII art, check out Email Effects, and check out #SAC on EFNET for the Superior Art Creations!

  7. anyone know where to get this famous 'spock' ? by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 5, Interesting

    this is an actual line (chain?) printer printout from the early 80's. you can see its yellowing and I'd like to reprint it on a modern printer.

    but I don't have the source. it was on an old DECsystem-10 or -20 many years ago:

    spock ascii poster

    any pointers to this multi over-print goodie?

    --

    --
    "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
  8. Some of the best artists... by WiKKeSH · · Score: 5, Informative

    Some of the best artists can be found at:
    http://www.chemical-reaction.org
    http://www. ice.org (mostly ansi)
    http://www.acheron.org
    http://www.remorse. org
    http://www.wasted.nu/woe/01/ascii/

    --
    Downmix - The Artscene News Source!
  9. The many faces of ascii by mkro · · Score: 5, Informative
    Obviously, there's more than one ASCII art scene. In some of them, the artists even are organized into groups, cooperating and releasing regular "packs" under the same label. Some people might not agree on these categories (and there are some overlapping), but I'll try to list them:

    The Amiga ascii scene (Now often refered to as the "oldschool scene"):
    From the early 90's people made "collections" - large textfiles - with logos (file_id.diz, bbs adverts, demo group names, etc), and later rants, poems and other forms of self expression. Tools of the trade: Slash, backslash, underscore, pipe, you get the idea.
    Freshpla.net has a pretty good (though not updated) archive. Yes, I know, this might be look like madness to, hm, laymen :) If you really want to have a closer look, though, check out the works of e.g. Mark Ryder, Grimlock, and... no, too many to mention. All collections should be viewed with CygnusEd in Topaz 8, even though your browser could do the trick.

    The blockstyle scene
    These are the nice people that make most of those NFO files. Uses the blocks in the MS-DOS charset. Two of the biggest groups are Superior Art Creations (SAC) and Chemical Reaction (CRO). Get the Damn NFO Viewer (Win32).

    The newschool scene
    Seems to be the part of the group-based ascii scene that stays furthest away from the warez scene. Uses e.g. $$$$$$ to fill shapes, and various other characters to make their outline smooth. Only active examples I can remember at the moment are Mimic and Remorse. Ansi happens :)

    The Ansi scene
    Ascii is ascii and ansi is ansi, but these scenes are closely connected. Colourized art using the MS-DOS font. There can only be one: ACID. Viewers available for most platforms, just use Google.

    ...and then, of course, there are those other forms of ascii art, as the hilarious The Adventures of the Boy with Immovable Hair and this wonderful flash anim synced to an Offspring song (Might be from the same author as that flash link in the parent post).

    --
    I shall go and tell the indestructible man that someone plans to murder him.