What why and how

Textmode arts – brief history and tutorial

History of Ansi & Ascii arts

PC Ansi and Ascii, Amiga Ascii

Artscene these days

Techniques and tutorials

Live drawing something

Me

Name: H7 (or velikani)

Numbers: 39yrs old, since 1995 in demoscene/artscene

Groups: Blocktronics, Break!Ascii, Tristar & Red Sector Inc, Accession, Damones, HiRMU, etc

Demoscene role: graphics and demoparty/bustrip organizing

Other hobbies: drawing, gym, alcohol, travels

$dayjob in cyber security

Origins

Where did the textmode artscene come from?Bulletin Board Systems

Default bbs's looked like crap and not like UG BBS culture should

It was cool to have a sweet bbs advertisement in msg net & zips!

Also it was cool to have a long ansi in the beginning and a customized main menu

Any of you here who have not been into a BBS? I’ll demo one if you haven’t seen it!

Infofiles for groups and releases

Mostly in warez scene, to explain how to run/keygen a release

Self respecting demo groups would have infofiles too

Techniques

80x25 originates from MS DOS and Terminal

programs used from DOS prompt.

Main difference between ANSI and ASCII is

that ASCII is not colored.

Could be argued that colored ascii is ascii, but

who cares about bickering on the topic, right?

Also my favourite screen size for textmode

arts

Techniques

Textmode artscene stuff can be divided into three major streams, of which ANSI is dominant

1. PC ANSI

2. PC ASCII

3. AMIGA ASCII

There’s also petscii for Commodore 64 and teletext art, but they are quite small compared to the ANSI scene

Haciend El Bananas

Shock G / Jedi Arts

Who’s Online

Zeus / Style & Mystic

Mail scan

Sperm Whale / Twilight

Main Menu

dMG / Divine Stylers!

PC MS DOS CP437 Character set (from

Pablodraw)

Amiga character set (from Pablodraw)

PC ANSI PC ASCII AMIGA

ASCII

Current day textmodeartscene

Artscene these days

Artpacks are published online and in BBS’s

Ascii collections (‘collys) are also available

Demos that run in textmode Alpha Design demos (go youtube that stuff up)

Textmode demo competition (TMDC) no longer exists but past demos were awesome!

Artscene these days

Not many europeans draw these days Majority of 90’s amiga ascii artists were European (like the demoscene

was)

Some groups still exist; Blocktronics, Impure, Galza, Break!Asciithat release, even with an extended schedule

Pablodraw was a gamechanger, artists could collaborate online and draw big pieces together

A bunch of BBS’s are still online and available via TELNET, and their sysops also want (need) artworks.

Places to go to look at art for fun & inspiration

Online galleries

Sixteencolors.net

Textmod.es / bbs.ninja

Ascii Arena (oh wait, it’s still offline)

The online galleries allow viewing individual artpacks and searches for different artists and so on. Most of the artpacks are online.

Questions?

Also: time for a short tutorial

Thanks!

This presentation: http://ascii.graphics/prez.pdf

Presentation of Blocktronics, our group, in slideshare

Textmode art sites http://sixteencolors.net & http://textmod.es

Pablodraw is at http://picoe.ca/products/pablodraw/

You can stalk me on Twitter @velikani or email me at velikani at velikani dot com if you want some tips or to talk more about the topic

Thanks to all the artists who were represented in the presentation; sw, luciano ayres, dmg, jab, jed, roy, lord acid and sysops of black flag & the yard.

Tutorials (when sixteencolors.net is online)

http://sixteencolors.net/pack/blocktronics_blockalypse/zO-TheDefinitiveChickDrawingTutorial.ans

http://sixteencolors.net/pack/blocktronics_acid_trip/zO-flyingEagleTutorial.ANS

http://sixteencolors.net/pack/blocktronics_res_v_olution/zv-tutorial.ans

http://sixteencolors.net/pack/asauce1/sz-tut0r.ans

http://sixteencolors.net/pack/apathy05/NT-HOW2.ANS