ASCII Art - A Trip Down Memory Lane

in #asciiart6 years ago (edited)

If you remember the term ASCII Art, congratulations, you've been around long enough to see the Internet grow from a baby into an adult.

Believe it or not, this was one the most searched topics in the Internet, in the early 90's.

Technology was so good and so Lightning fast (pun intended) that people would prefer to visit sites with no images. It was simply too boring and too expensive to wait for images to load. Pages with images would be naturally ostracised. Nobody wanted to look at images.

  • "Give us text, give us text!" - Shouted the mobs!

Nowadays people close pages... if they don't have enough images. Ahahah!

What a long way we've come, eh?

Meanwhile, ASCII Art has become a lost and buried form of art.


What is ASCII?

  • 7-Bit ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange), as defined in ISO-646 is a basic set of 128 numbered symbols which almost all kinds of computer can display.

What is ASCII Art?

  • ASCII Art is any sort of pictures or diagrams drawn with the printable characters in the ASCII character set.

The most common ASCII Art picture is the smiley. :-)
But as you'll see, it is possible to do a lot more.


ASCII Art Examples


There's a big archive set up at www.asciiart.eu. Here are a few examples taken from this site:

Art by Joris Bellenger

image.png


Venus de Milo by Morfina

image.png


Queen of the Nile by John Stachowicz

image.png


PC by Joan G. Stark

image.png


The Beatles by Veronica Karlsson

image.png


Mona Lisa by Normand Veilleux

image.png


Swimmer on Starting Block by Joan G. Stark

image.png


Snorkel by Joan G. Stark

image.png


St. Francis of Assisi by Nina Butorac

image.png


Me after a karate grading ;) by Shanaka Dias

image.png


In Honour of Colin Douthwaites by Shanaka Dias

image.png


Calvin and Hobbes by Shanaka Dias

image.png


Animated ASCII Art

  • After some time and, assisted by the evolution of the Internet, artists got more creative and started combining ASCII Art pictures to create ASCII Art Animations.

Animated ASCII Art Examples

(Unfortunately, these animations have been copied over the Internet so many times that their authors are long forgotten...)


Once upon a time there was a Walking Man...
WalkingMan.gif

... who fell in love with a Dancing Girl...
DancingGirl.gif

He Blowed Her a Kiss...
BlowKiss.gif

They got together and Dancing Kid was born!
DancingKid.gif


A few more examples


Here's a Sexy Ass:
SexyAss.gif

Was this the beginning of Internet Porn? Most likely. But...

The Giraffe Says No...
GiraffeSaysNo.gif

... and the Laughing Kid explodes into laughter:
LaughingKid.gif


Other interesting ASCII Art Archives:


If you want to try and create your own ASCII Art, here's a very cool Online ASCII Art Editor:

If you want to create an ASCII Art from an existing image, here are a couple of Online Tools:

Take it a step further and create an Animated ASCII Art from an existing Animated Gif:


And to conclude, I'll point you to a cool article about ASCII Art:


Were you fan of ASCII Art, back then? Let me know your opinion in the comments.


I hope you've enjoyed this article!

@trincowski signing out.

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Okay.. I'm old enough to remember... How embarrassing! But wow, you have chosen some really good examples!

Welcome to the club... I'm not getting any younger myself. 🤣

I remember these things. They where so cool... hahaha the good old days.

Computers were so much fun, back then. I loved my Amiga 1200 so much. I never loved any other PC since then. 😶

O teu post foi selecionado e votado pela curadoria @pataty69 projeto que procura grandes recompensas em posts com excelentes conteúdos e que pode ser seguido na minha trail no Steemauto .

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Xiii que regresso ao passado! Confesso que não era grande fã na altura, mas este é um belo post! Obrigado! :P

Eu passava tardes a enviar ASCII Art via IRC! :-D

IRC... outra pérola! Essa sim usei com fartura! Mas sem ASCII Art :P

We must not forget ascii art Star Wars nor the contempory ANSI art on BBS's of the time, the LORD and TW2002 screens still bring up memories.

Throw in a few examples if you can. Thanks for your comment.

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A fan? Definitely. But it had nothing to do with these popularized images...

1537531569569_trimmed.png

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haven't seen that in a while.
In the 80-ies of the last century, even he tried to draw.