Table of contents
- Introduction
- Types of ASCII art
- Lineart
- Solid
- Grayscale
- Camelized
- Others
- Drawing ASCII art
- Starting out
- Lineart
- Solid art
- Grayscale
- Antialiasing
- Tracing
- Aspect ratio
- Difficulties and limitations
- Perspective, 3D and isometric ASCII
- Textures and materials
- Lighting and shadow
- Uses for different characters
- Fixed-width fonts
- Courier New
- DOS font
- Topaz New
- Lucida Console
- Fixedsys
- Arial Alternative
- MS Gothic
- Andale Mono (aka Monotype.com)
- ASCII art software
- JavE
- FIGlet
- TheDraw/Aciddraw
- Acidview
- PabloDraw
- Aewan
- Other stuff
- ASCII map
- Displaying ASCII art on web pages
- Coloring ASCII art
- Demoscene ASCII art
- ASCII art culture and etiquette
__ __ _ _ _ _ ____ ____ ___ ___ _
| \/ | __ _(_)(_) __ _( )___ / \ / ___| / ___|_ _|_ _| __ _ _ __| |_
| |\/| |/ _` | || |/ _` |// __| / _ \ \___ \| | | | | | / _` | '__| __|
| | | | (_| | || | (_| | \__ \ / ___ \ ___) | |___ | | | | | (_| | | | |_
|_| |_|\__,_|_|/ |\__,_| |___/ /_/ \_\____/ \____|___|___| \__,_|_| \__|
|__/
(updated 5th April 2005)
1) Introduction
ASCII is an acronym of "American Standard Code for Information
Interchange". ASCII art means art made out of different characters in
the ASCII map and can thus be represented in plain text format. It
cannot include extended characters or text formatting such as bold or
italics. ASCII art is always done on a fixed-width font like Courier
New or Fixedsys, never on a proportional font like Arial or Times New
Roman. It can be made in Notepad or MS-DOS Edit, but there are also
some specific programs for making ASCII art. And no, I'm not talking
about ASCII converters.
People often comment on ASCII art by saying "Wow, that is so amazing,
I'd never have the patience to make something like that". I don't get
it. Why do they think ASCII art requires so much patience? I can make a
decent fullscreen ASCII in an hour (even if it sometimes takes ten
hours). It takes me at least fifteen hours to draw a decent fullscreen
CG picture.
ASCII art isn't easy and it does require skill, but you don't have to
care about things like brush strokes or colors and usually not about
shading either. In a way it is a lot like pixel art. When I started
pixeling it felt very familiar due to my ASCII and ANSI experience.
Pixel artists will probably experience a similar reaction when they
start drawing ASCII. You don't have to have great drawing skills to be
a good ASCII artist. I, for instance, suck at drawing, I can paint but
I can't do the sketch like thing at all. ASCII sketching is practically
something non-existant, but if this interests you, nothing stops you
from trying this new style.
Some people wonder what's the point. What's the point in making art in
general? I think limitations are what makes art interesting and feeds
the creative mind. ASCII art probably isn't something that you
encounter in an art museum (which is regrettable), it's more like
everyday art. I guess it has something in common with pop art. ASCII
art can be sent via email or to Usenet newsgroups, it can be
used on IRC and many chatrooms (do that with caution, though). You can
include ASCII art in your signature or login screen or print it out
with your old matrix printer. It can be used for representing game
situations, graphs or molecular models.
I've heard opinions of ASCII art not being art but graphical design,
but I disagree with that. Design is usually considered to be something
functional, such as advertisements or interfaces, while visual art is
something you can hang on your walls. ASCII art usually isn't
functional but aesthetical. I know people who have ASCII pictures
hanging on their walls.
There are other ASCII tutorials, but I decided there's still room
for another one. Many of the others are outdated, some are even more
than 10 years old. They also feature slightly different techniques and
lack some of the parts that my tutorial focuses on. This turned out
perhaps more like a ASCII drawing/culture FAQ than an actual tutorial,
but I hope it will still be useful.
2) Types of ASCII art
2a) Lineart
Lineart is just what its name implies, things are represented with
(usually thin) outlines, sometimes dotty, sometimes consisting mostly
of slashes, underscores and pipes. Lineart also includes most FIGlet
fonts and demoscene logos. Suitable for both huge images and tiny
pictures.
.-"""-.
' \
|,. ,-. |
|()L( ()| |
|,' `".| |
|.___.',| `
.j `--"' ` `.
/ ' ' \
/ / ` `.
/ / ` .
/ / l |
. , | |
,"`. .| |
_.' ``. | `..-'l
| `.`, | `.
| `. __.j )
|__ |--""___| ,-'
`"--...,+"""" `._,.-' mh
Penguin by DiamonDie (2002?)
2b)Solid
Solid art is the "opposite" of lineart, it's not outlined but filled
and flat-shaded.
It's often best fit on mid-sized and large pictures, though it can also
work for small pieces, such as the heart here. Often it looks better
than lineart, simply for the fact that it's not as "thin". Solid art is
often used for logos, ornament designs and text, but it fits almost any
kind of subject. It's not very well suited for faces though.
,o8o, ,o8o,
,888888,888888,
888888888888888
888888888888888
`8888888888888'
`888888888'
`88888'
`8'
Heart by DiamonDie (1997)
2c) Grayscale
Grayscale is like solid art, but it consists of many different
characters that are used to portrays lighter and darker areas, making
it the most suitable kind of ASCII for picturing faces. It is usually
best viewed white on black, such as the example below (people using
most graphical browsers can select it with a mouse or press Ctrl-A to
see it in inverse color). Most converters create grayscale art, though
rather messy kind with often no antialiasing. Grayscale could be
considered the most difficult of all ASCII techniques.
.,,,yyyy@@yyyyy,,,
,ytS$$CCCCCCCCCCCCCCC?III;,.
.yt$$$$$$$$CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCIIIIII;.
,4$$$$$$$$$$$$$$SCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC?IIIII;
y$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCIIII,
,$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$CCCCCCCCCCCCCCIIII:
l$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$CCCCCCCCCCCCIIIIi
t$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$CCCCCCCCCCCCIIII:
.l$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$SCCCCCCCCCCCCCIIII, i
d$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$SCCCCCCCCCCCCCIIIII. ;I,
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$SSCCCCCCCCCCCCCIIIIIII .III
j$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$SSCCCCCCCCCCCCCCIIIIIIIi.II;
]$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$P"' `"^?CCCCCCCCCCIIIIIIIIIIIII
l$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$P"'' .,.. `;?CCCCCCC?IIIIIIIIII; .y%*
l$$$$$$$$$$$$SP" ,yS$$$$$$Shy..`"IICCCCCCII: :: 4C7; \
$$$$$$$$$$$SP. .;;$$$SCCCCCSSCCCCSb: ICCCCCCCII; '' liC$ClCC;;l
$$$$$$$$$$$$I::lIIIICCSSSSSSCCCCCCCCCCIICCCCCCCI ICCC$lCC??;b
P"^^^48$$$$$$SSIII' `Ii : y,"ICCCS$SCCCCCCCCCCI ICl"l "7SSbl.
: l$$8888II66 ,?$b,yySIIICC$$$$$$$$SCCCCCCCI ?CCb l JCC$il
: . ,$$$$$$CCCC$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$CCCCCCI ICS$li$$SCC?l
`SS",+.$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$CCCCCCI !?S$ ;I$$SCCP
"' : S$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$CCCCCCI ICSCS$$$$$I
;:6$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$CCCCCCI `?C$$$$P
`$$$$$$$$$$S$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$CCCCCCI `""""'
j$$$$$$$$$SCCS$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$CCCCCI
$$$$$$$$$$$$$CI$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$SCCCCCI;
j$$$$$$$$$$SS$CI$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$SSCCCCCIi
7$$$$T7"`,yyiIIC$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$SSSSCCCC?i
"4$SC**7"""-:47$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$SSSSCCCCCI
7I . ,';' ";7ICS$$$$$$$$$C$S$$$$$CCCCl
: jy.,jyyjCCCCi ..i."7C$$$$$$C$CS$S$$$SCCC?' ;
: d$$$$CCC7?"""""?7CiiCS$$$$SCCCC$S$$$$CCCC; i,
.CC,]CCSSSCCSCCCIiIiICS$$$SSCCCCS$$$$SCC? .|
:`j$$$$$$$$SCCCC$$$CICS$$SCCCCCCCC$CC?; iI.
:l$$$$$$$CCCCCS$$$$C?iCCCCCCCCC7"'., .iII,
:C?"~~ ,CCC$$$IiIiCCCCCCC? ' ,IIIII
:$7 ,_,jS$$$$CIiIi?iCCC?? iI?CCCII
.; :;i:;;?S???iiIiIi?i' iII?CCCCCII.
; ';' ?lCi??i;i;; iI?CCCCCCCCIIi
: ;? ;I" iIIICCSCCCCCCCCIIl
; .,iiI?CCCC$$$$$SSCCCCCCIi I, II;
'. _,. ,i,IIII?CCCCCS$$$$$$SSSCCCCIIIIIIIII'
' ~ + =- - ' ~ ` SCCIIIIII???CCCCS$$$$$$$$$$$SCCCCCCC?I"
l$$CCCCCCCCCCCCS$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$SCCC"`
It Figures by nemoorange
2d) Camelized
Camelized ASCII art isn't very popular, even though it already appeared
in
the book Alice in Wonderland. It is usually poetry (sometimes prose)
made into the shape of an object, often an animal. There are a couple
of different techniques for making the shapes. Some people use extra
spacing to achieve lines of required length, others wrap words from the
middle or use extra characters. JavE has a feature for camelized ASCII.
The Dolphins' Way,
In Me Aspirations of the living
sea The dolphins do move within me The aura of
their soul, I feel deep down To be in the water
and not on ground Sifting through the
ocean, an expressing show Communi-
cation of a song and a blow Pro-
tecting even those not of their
kind They ask nothing in return,
they do not mind The most gracious
and unselfish of all that wander I
wish to swim with them, nothing could
be fonder The dolphins mean so much
to me, you see I need to thank them,
for showing us how to be (Donovan 1997)
Dolphin by Donovan
2e)Others
There are variations of the previously listed styles, such as
combination of solid and lineart (my favorite type of ASCII), "solid
lineart" (made out of heavy outlines in solid style) and tiny ASCII,
such as smileys and other very small pictures. ASCII animations are
made for terminals or nowadays usually in JavaScript, they can be made
in any of these styles, but are usually in lineart. There are also
ASCII stereograms and many other wicked things. Some people list
lettering, signature art, illustrated stories and 3D as their own
genres, but they're usually just variations of line art (sometimes
solid or grayscale).
Things that can be erroneously believed to be ASCII art include
Shift_JIS art (text art using Japanese characters), typographic
pictures, AOL macros (made in
Arial font and often including extended characters), ANSI and most of
demoscene "ASCII art". Another thing that definitely isn't ASCII art is
those horrid HTML
conversions that are usually composed of 1s and 0s and would have
absolutely no shape with the color removed. These are sometimes called
"text
art" or "character art", even though both terms can be considered
slightly misleading. I don't believe using a converter without any
editing is really creating ASCII art. It's image manipulation.
People sometimes confuse ASCII and ANSI and call either
of them "ANSII". What ANSI really is could be described as an extension
to ASCII, allowing the use of extended MS-DOS characters (such as
so called "raster blocks") and 16 colors. It was commonly used in the
BBS (Bulletin Board system) world, but many people still keep drawing
ANSI pictures, even though MS-DOS is hardly used any more and the
Internet has largely killed off BBSes.
3) Drawing ASCII art
3a) Starting out
Start up JavE or your favorite text editor. Think about what you want
to draw and what could be a good subject for
your first ASCII. Try not to pick anything too difficult, such as
celebrities. Many people choose a house as their first picture, but I
think it's a little boring subject. Others attempt a
face, but that's much harder. Animals, plants and household
objects often turn out to be a good choice. You can either draw a
single object or a scene, like a house, a tree and some birds.
A reference picture may be helpful. You could also use a technique
called tracing which is explained later. Looking at other people's
ASCIIs is just as important as drawing your own, because you'll learn a
lot of different techniques just by looking at ASCII art. How do people
achieve slanted lines, how do they make fur look like fur and what's
the secret of smooth curves?
Also remember the rules of normal art, like that eyes are located in
the middle of the head, not on the top. People are about 7-8 heads
tall, unless you're drawing a comic character. Houses usually aren't
placed on top of the ground, but on the ground. Perspective really
improves pictures of cubic objects. A house or a box without a
perspective is pretty much just a rectangle, not very interesting.
3b) Lineart
Lineart is a good choice for an ASCII beginner. It might be a good idea
to do a rough "sketch" first. Draw the outline of your object and see
if it bears any resemblance to your model. Try to avoid using only
straight lines and slashes, that makes your picture look dull and
awkward. Instead try commas, periods, hyphens and apostrophes. It might
be a good idea to sketch with periods first and then change some of them to
colons or semicolons, some to apostrophes and then extend that.
Forget about shading, reflections and stuff like that. Try using as
many different characters as you can without getting silly results. You
can get more
detail with lineart than with solid technique, but you still might have
to give up some for a better result. If you're drawing a face, you
don't have to draw every single wrinkle and you might skip the
eyelashes too.
3c) Solid art
Not many people start out with solid ASCII, but nothing says you can't
do that. Filled pictures are no harder to make than outlined ones, it
just doesn't fit for
houses and faces very well. It's usually a good idea not to use
outlines with solid art. Some people use a different character for
every area of the picture, but I think it's better to stick with one or
a few filler characters. Antialiasing is very important in solid art.
3d) Grayscale
Grayscale ASCII is difficult to draw, not recommended for beginners,
even though I know people who have started off with it with fine
results.
You need a good eye for light and shadow and a good reference photo is
a must, you may want to
increase the contrast of it. Picking the right set of characters is
crucial, remember that the "lightness" of some characters varies
greatly between fonts. Take a look at existing grayscale ASCII art or even
converted pictures to get inspiration for good character sets. Don't
start out too small, 80x25 is probably the minimum you want to attempt and 80x50 is better.
3e) Antialiasing
Antialiasing doesn't really apply for lineart the same way it applies
for solid and grayscale, but I think smooth edges are one of the most
important things in a solid ASCII picture (unless you're aiming for a
different impression). Often grayscale is drawn without any empty
spaces in the picture, but sometimes without a background
and
that's when you really need antialiasing.
Simple antialiasing is actually very easy to do and can often be
achieved with periods/commas and apostrophes/accents/quotation marks
alone. Just add these when there's a rough corner and it looks much
better. Sometimes you may want to use more characters. I use d, b and n
(sometimes m) for the upper parts of objects and + for lower parts, the
plus doesn't look too good, but it's the best I've found. q and p can
be used to match d and b, but they hang lower. P is better, but it has
no equivalent for the left side. Demoscene
artists often use a wider variety of antialiasing characters, such as
7, 4, \, / and %.
88888
88888888888
8888888888888
8888888888888
8888888888888
88888888888
88888
A filled circle without antialiasing
.nd888bn.
.d888888888b.
8888888888888
8888888888888
8888888888888
`+888888888+'
`"+888+"'
The same circle with antialiasing
3f) Tracing
In the ancient times, people sometimes drew/copied the picture on a
transparency first, which they taped on the screen to be able to trace
the image as well as possible. I used this technique once, when I
needed to make an ASCII out of a map and first I traced the picture
from a book, but I didn't have a transparency so I used a plastic bag,
perhaps needless to say the results weren't excellent.
When Netscape Composer came out, some people figured out that they
could just set the image file as the page background and draw over it.
Now we have JavE, which has a particular function just for this, you
can set the display size and aspect ratio of the image file and apply
some brightness/contrast tweaks.
3g) Aspect ratio
Aspect ratio is something to pay attention to, particularly because of
the differences between the fonts. Practically all fonts are taller
than they're wide, so a picture of 10 lines and 10 columns probably
won't look rectangular. Fixed-width fonts in general are of
roughly the same width, but Topaz New is considerably more narrow,
while Courier and its descendants are very fat. Most people have their
web browsers set to use Courier, so some pictures may look unneededly
fat, but this is partly unavoidable. Just pay attention to this if
you're drawing ASCII for a particular purpose or if you're using
Courier or Topaz to draw. One way to solve this is not to draw pictures
that are supposed to be exactly circular or square and a different
angle can help too. One of my ASCII pictures looks just fine in both
80x25 and 80x50 fullscreen resolutions, even though the 80x50 font is
twice as wide.
3h) Difficulties and limitations
Some things are very hard to do in ASCII, some of these are obvious and
some not so obvious. Slanted, almost vertical lines are very hard and
usually end up looking stupid, so it's a good idea to avoid them
whenever possible. Completely straight vertical lines are often
better. The same problem doesn't apply for slanted horizontal lines at
all, those are very easy to do once you learn to use different
characters correctly.
Things with a high resolution/detail are also hard, things like small
spirals.
That's why you sometimes need to drop the detail (or draw the picture
in a bigger resolution). You also can't properly represent blurriness
or softness, or at least that's extremely difficult. You can do some
optical illusions in ASCII, such as stereograms. Magic eye
pictures are probably not possible, excluding very high resolutions.
3i) Perspective, 3D and isometric ASCII
Some ASCII pictures feature a perspective, but it's often a very simple
one
and limited to lines. In a way, a lot of ASCII art could be called
naivistic. Even a simple perspective improves the picture, though. A
good way for creating a perspective is drawing the lines so
that they would continue to this imaginary perspective point, which can
be located in the middle of the picture or elsewhere. Isometric ASCII
art exists too. JavE has a feature that can render 3D shapes in ASCII
art, as wireframes or with a simple lighting.
.:.
.::'.
: : : '.
.' : : '.
.' : : '.
: : : '.
.: : : :
.' : : '.
.' : : :
: : : '.
.' : : '.
.' : ...:. '.
: ......::''''' '''... '.
':'' : '''... '.
'. : ''':.
'. : ...'''
'. : ...'''
'. : ...''''
'. : ...'''
':.'''
A wireframe pyramid by JavE
3j) Textures and materials
Textures and materials aren't commonly seen in ASCII art, if you don't
count brick walls and hair.
Plastic, metal, wood and skin all look alike in ASCII. Hairy and spiky
textures can be done and often artists use different kinds of
characters
for different areas, like dots for clouds and lines for more solid
objects. Experimenting with textures can lead to interesting results.
.
._`-\ )\,`-.-.
\'\` \)\ \)\ \|.)
\`) |\) )\ .)\ )\|
\ \)\ |)\ ` \ .')/|
``-.\ \ )\ ` . ., '(
\\ -. `)\``- ._ .)` |\(,_
`__ '\ `-- _\`. ` (/
`\,\ .\\ /
'` ) (`-.\\ `
a:f /||\ `. * _*|
`-.( `\
`. \
`(c
Echidna by Andreas Freise
3k) Lighting and shadow
Light isn't usually present in ASCII pictures, with the exception of
grayscale. Reflections sometimes work, but normal shadows often end up
looking clumsy. Some artists use slight shading in their line art,
usually with periods and colons. It might a good idea to forget about
highlights when drawing eyes (and perhaps hair too). Just pretend that
the ASCII world lives in ambient lighting without separate light
sources.
3l) Uses for different characters
! used sometimes in lineart and solid style, but the
character is very thin in some fonts and fat in
some others
> sometimes useful for lineart, but the angle
varies
# used sometimes as the filler character in solid
style, not often used in lineart except for tiny images
$ a common filler character (especially in demoscene
art) and common in grayscale as well, but the brightness of this
characters varies in different fonts
% I've seen it used as a filler too, but the looks it
vary a lot as well, especially between DOS and Windows
& not commonly used due to its problematic shape
' used for all styles, the only problem is that
sometimes it is a tiny straight line, sometimes more like a
little slash
( used for lineart, sometimes solid style too, the
plumpiness varies a bit
) -"-
* used in line art and solid, but be wary as the size
and placement of this character varies a lot, so it's usually not a
good filler
+ not so common in line art, but I love using it in
solid art because it's the only mid-sized character that doesn't reach
to the bottom of the line
, used in all styles, sometimes located higher than
the
period, sometimes not
- used in most styles, has no problems associated
with
it
. used in all styles
/ used mostly in lineart, the slantedness varies
(especially between DOS and Windows)
0 not commonly used, the problem is that sometimes
it's struck through, sometimes not, O is better
1 not commonly used
2 not commonly used
3 not commonly used
4 not commonly used
5 not commonly used
6 used in solid style, sometimes grayscale and
lineart, useful for little eyes
7 useful for some shapes of lineart, sometimes solid
style too
8 a great filler for solid style, not much used in
lineart
9 used in solid style, sometimes grayscale and
lineart, useful for little eyes
: useful for lineart and the edges of solid style
; useful for lineart and the edges of solid style
< sometimes useful for lineart, but the angle
varies
= sometimes used for lines
> sometimes useful for lineart, but the angle
varies
? mostly used in lineart
@ useful as a solid filler and often for lineart too,
especially the eyes. Shape varies, but usually that doesn't cause
problems
A useful for angular shapes, sometimes has serif
though
B not commonly used, sometimes seen as a solid filler
C useful for lineart in eyes, noses and stuff like
that, sometimes seen as a solid filler
D sometimes used in lineart
E not commonly used
F used in vertical lines in some line art styles
G not commonly used
H sometimes seen as a solid filler
I sometimes used for vertical lines, but remember
that it may be serif and thus look awkward
J used in slanted vertical lines in some line art
styles
K used in slanted vertical lines in some line art styles
L used for angles and sometimes in vertical lines
M common solid style filler together with its lighter
version N
N common solid style filler together with M
O usually the best choice for small round shapes,
sometimes used in solid style
P good for antialiasing solid style
Q sometimes used for eyes
R not commonly used
S sometimes used as a solid style filler
T sometimes used in lineart
U sometimes used in lineart
V used in connecting two diagonal lines, something
that doesn't look too good in all fonts
W common solid style filler
X sometimes used as a solid style filler or for
connecting diagonal lines
Y used in connecting diagonal lines and in some
styles also for vertical lines and other things
Z not commonly used
a sometimes used as eyes or as a solid style
antialiaser
b good for solid antialiasing (the pair is d)
c sometimes used as eyes/noses or as a solid style
antialiaser
d a common solid style antialiaser
e sometimes used as eyes or as a solid style antialiaser
f sometimes used for slanted vertical lines
g not commonly used
h sometimes used as a solid style filler or
antialiasing
i not commonly used
j useful for slanted vertical lines, sometimes
antialiasing too
k used in slanted vertical lines in some line art styles
l for vertical lines in lineart, sometimes solid
antialiasing too
m good for solid antialiasing
n good for solid antialiasing
o for lineart and solid antialiasing
p good for solid antialiasing (the pair is q),
sometimes P is better even though it doesn't have a symmetric pair
r sometimes used in lineart
s sometimes used for solid antialiasing
t sometimes used in lineart
u sometimes used in lineart
v sometimes used in lineart, though might suffer from the
same problem as V
w sometimes used for solid antialiasing.
x for connecting lines in lineart
z not commonly used
4) Fixed-width fonts
ASCII art needs to be viewed on a fixed-width font. The fonts have
differences, so even though it's not a good idea to "optimize" your
picture for a particular font, it's completely ok to say "best viewed
with a Lucida Console, preferably a small font size and white on
black". Most of the fonts
I list are free of cost and TrueType/OpenType, usable on eg. Windows,
Linux and Macintosh. There are also other choices for other operating
systems, commercial font faces and several fonts that can only be
acquired with a particular piece of software.
4a) Courier New
Courier New is the font that looks like a typewriter. It's very wide,
which can sometimes cause problems. It's not particularly
aesthetical either. Most people use it as their fixed-width font for
web browsing.
4b) MS-DOS font
The 80x25 DOS font is cool, especially for solid art, or maybe it's
just the white on black. The 80x50 one is less cool.
4c) Topaz New
Topaz is the font used by the operating system of the Amiga computer
and Topaz New is a TrueType version of it. It's very narrow, but quite
thick and well suited for ASCII art. You can download it on the
Internet.
4d) Lucida Console
Lucida Console was introduced in Windows 98 and is nowadays the
default font in Notepad. It's an ordinary sans serif font, quite
decent, but
may have unpleasant effects on some pictures (especially grayscale).
4e) Fixedsys
Fixedsys is a nice sans serif font that used to be the default for
Notepad. Many people use it as their ASCII viewing font and it definitely
isn't bad for that. Fixedsys is a bitmap font so some Windows programs
might not allow you use it.
4f) Arial Alternative
Arial Alternative looks like Courier bred with Arial, resulting in a
wide, relatively thick sans serif font, not exactly my cup of tea.
4g) MS Gothic
MS Gothic has nothing to do with slitting wrists, it's actually meant
for displaying Japanese. It is sans serif and looks quite ok, but I'm
not sure if it's worth getting and installing just for ASCII art, as
the file size is a whopping four megabytes.
4h) Andale Mono (aka Monotype.com)
Andale Mono is actually a commercial font, but it was apparently
bundled with some versions of Internet Explorer. This is a fixed-width
font that actually looks stylish, even though it might not be the best
one for viewing ASCII art.
5) ASCII art software
5a) JavE
Jave is the Photoshop of the ASCII world, but unlike Photoshop, it's
free software. It's also multiplatform because it runs on Java, so you
need to download the Java runtimes to get it to work. JavE offers
many kinds of painting modes, gradients, textures and brushes.
Naturally it also gives you the ability to copy and paste rectangles,
flip and mirror pictures and. JavE also contains a a watermark option,
a picture to ASCII converter, camelizer, an ASCII 3D modeller, FIGlet
and many other features. You can even make ASCII animations with
it.
5b) FIGlet
FIGlet is a derivative of the Unix program "banner" which was meant for
the
automated creation of crude ASCII art text logos. There are hundreds
of different FIGlet fonts available, from handwriting to 3D letters.
FIGlet files are plain text with some special markup for the program,
so they're quite easy to make. You can also use JavE for creating
FIGlet fonts.
88888888b oo dP dP
88 88 88
a88aaaa dP .d8888b. 88 .d8888b. d8888P
88 88 88' `88 88 88ooood8 88
88 88 88. .88 88 88. ... 88
dP dP `8888P88 dP `88888P' dP
.88
d8888P
___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
/\ \ /\ \ /\ \ /\__\ /\ \ /\ \
/::\ \ _\:\ \ /::\ \ /:/ / /::\ \ \:\ \
/::\:\__\ /\/::\__\ /:/\:\__\ /:/__/ /::\:\__\ /::\__\
\/\:\/__/ \::/\/__/ \:\:\/__/ \:\ \ \:\:\/ / /:/\/__/
\/__/ \:\__\ \::/ / \:\__\ \:\/ / \/__/
\/__/ \/__/ \/__/ \/__/
Some examples of FIGlet fonts
5c) TheDraw/ACiDDraw
TheDraw is an MS-DOS based application meant for drawing ASCII and
ANSI, originating from the mid-80s. It can be operated with a
mouse, but the menus and commands are
executed with the keyboard. It's fairly easy to use once you learn it
and you probably won't forget them any time soon. It also features a
VGA mode where you can zoom out your picture.
ACiDDraw is an improved version by TheDraw made by the legendary
artgroup ACiD. I drew ASCII and ANSI with it for years and occasionally
still do. Some computers have problems with running ACiDDraw, which can
cause runtime errors or freezing of the program. In Windows tweaking
the settings of the program often help.
5d) ACiDView
ACiDView is a freeware Windows program, also by ACiD. It's used for
viewing ASCII and ANSI files in several resolutions and can also save
them as PNG, which comes in handy. There are no drawing functions.
5e) PabloDraw
PabloDraw is another popular ANSI/ASCII editor for MS-DOS Windows,
somewhat similar to ACiDDraw. I personally have no experience using it,
but PabloDraw's support for multiuser drawing on the Internet is
definitely an interesting feature. There's also a viewer companion to
it, known as PabloView.
5f) Aewan
Aewan - ASCII art editor without a name - is an ANSI/ASCII editor for
Linux and other Unix systems. Its most notable feature is the ability to work with layers. I haven't used Aewan, so I can't really comment on it.
6 Other stuff
6a) ASCII map
032 [space] 048 0 064 @ 080 P 096 ` 112 p
033 ! 049 1 065 A 081 Q 097 a 113 q
034 " 050 2 066 B 082 R 098 b 114 r
035 # 051 3 067 C 083 S 099 c 115 s
036 $ 052 4 068 D 084 T 100 d 116 t
037 % 053 5 069 E 085 U 101 e 117 u
038 & 054 6 070 F 086 V 102 f 118 v
039 ' 055 7 071 G 087 W 103 g 119 w
040 ( 056 8 072 H 088 X 104 h 120 x
041 ) 057 9 073 I 089 Y 105 i 121 y
042 * 058 : 074 J 090 Z 106 j 122 z
043 + 059 ; 075 K 091 [ 107 k 123 {
044 , 060 < 076 L 092 \ 108 l 124 |
045 - 061 = 077 M 093 ] 109 m 125 }
6b) Displaying ASCII art on web pages
If you want to showcase ASCII art on your web page, you can just save
the images as text files and link to them. The problem with this is
that if you draw loads of small pictures, you will have hundreds of
files as well. Some older versions of Internet Explorer (and possibly
some other browsers) might show your art in proportional font.
When embedding your art into HTML pages, always remember the
<pre> tags, which tell the browser that the text is already
formatted and should be displayed in a fixed-width font. You
can use CSS to determine the particular font, provided that the viewer
has it.
6c) Coloring ASCII art
With HTML you can also color your ASCII pictures, but this is a tedious
job to do by hand and you can use an HTML editor for it.
Other ways for coloring ASCII art include ANSI colors and mIRC colors.
Both of these contain 16 foreground colors. MIRC also has as many
background colors, while ANSI only offers 8. ANSI can be viewed in DOS
or the DOS prompt of Windows if you have a driver called ansi.sys
loaded. Alternatively you can use an ANSI viewer like ACiDView or save
the pictures as GIF/PNG.
MIRC colors can only be used on IRC and not all clients support them -
and some networks have a channel mode that forbids you from using
colors. Some IRC clients (including mIRC) also support ANSI color, but
you may have to turn on that option first.
6d) Demoscene ASCII art
Demoscene is an underground culture based mostly on demos, which are
multimedia presentations a lot like animations, but calculated in real
time. They evolved from cracktros (tiny applications included with
cracked software) which had mostly scrollers and some background music.
Nowadays demos often look like music videos or professional 3D
animations. Demoscene is also much more than that, including national
and international gatherings, demoparties.
Like the infofiles of pirated software, demoscene productions (demos
and intros) often have an ASCII logo in their infofile. Generally
they're either so called "oldskool" ASCII or "block ASCII". Oldskool
ASCII consists of logos made mostly out of slashes, pipes, hyphens and
underscores. The logos appear very similar in style and hard to read
for many people.
They may look very easy to draw, but are more difficult than they seem.
.
_ ____:____
__ _ | (_ _ __
_\ ___ __ ___ | / ___ aBHO ____ /_
/ _(___ _/ /__ _/__/__ | _ /_/__/__ __/ _ (_
__ ___/ \ (_/ / \_/ _) (_| /// _) (_/ l/ _/_ ___
\ \_ _/ / _/ ` _/ / ` _/ ___\ / /
\ /________\ ______\ ______\ _/_________\ / /_____\ /
<--\/----------\/-------\/-------\/-----------\/---------\/-->
Clever by aBHO
Some oldskool ASCIIs are made on the Amiga and contain extended
characters, they're known as Amiga ASCII (compared to PC ASCII)
"Block ASCII" is not technically ASCII at all, as it utilizes extended
characters, "raster blocks", as does ANSI art. There's another type of
demoscene ASCII, known as "newskool ASCII". It's practically a solid
style, often used in graffiti-like logos and usually uses extended DOS
characters.
Besides info files, demoscene ASCII can also appear elsewhere. Some
demoparties have ASCII and ANSI competitions and there are ASCII logo
compos held on some IRC channels regularly. ASCII pictures are also
released in "collies" (collections) and artpacks. A colly is usually
just a text file with lot of logos by the same artist. An artpack is
usually released by an artgroup and can have ASCII, ANSI, Ripscript and
hires pictures.
6e) ASCII art culture and etiquette
The people who belong in the demoscene related art scene often regard
their scene as the "real" ASCII scene, though it's much newer and much
less popular than the mainstream ASCII scene. The alt.ascii-art Usenet
newsgroup has existed for a long time and is still rather active for
posting ASCII pictures and requesting them. There are other newsgroups,
but they receive hardly any traffic.
Usually people sign their ASCII pictures with their initials or with a
short nickname. You're usually free to use ASCII art for non-commercial
purposes as long as you keep those initials - it's the artist's
signature. In alt.ascii-art, people often diddle each other's
pictures. That means altering the picture slightly so that it looks
better - or like something totally different. Usually that means
including initials from every person who has participated in the
picture.
There's a certain individual in the newsgroup that makes "ASCII art
farts" of other people's images - he has done that every day for
several years. Don't be too offended if Tran takes a picture of yours
and adds a lame joke to it.
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