ASCII Art Nudes versus Original Playboy Centerfolds

I put up last year a collection of 100 ASCII Art pictures that have nude girls as motive. Most of them originate from the pre-computer/ASCII art era, when teletype and its text art, RTTY art (pronounced “ritty”), where predominant and popular among hobby ham radio operators. Some of them are even older than that and might even date back to the time of keyboard art.

After I watched once more the video of RaD Man/ACiD and his presentation at the Assembly 2004 demo party in Helsinki, Finland about the history of text art where he showed an example of nude teletype text art and then the original centerfold photograph from Playboy Magazine, I started doing some digging myself. So credits for the initiator and cause of this must go to him :).

As of today (update 08/2009), I was able to find the original photograph for 29 30 40 50 of the 100 ASCII nude images from my collection. I wanted to integrate them somehow into that page, but could not figure out a good way to do it yet. Big thanks to Brian who helped identifying a number of the latest additions and posted his findings at my blog, where I am asking for help with this.

To avoid holding things back forever, I decided now to write a blog post about it and show my findings that way.

I will show the original photographs of the old Playboy Magazine Issues next to the Image of the ASCII art version of it. I converted the original text images to PNG, because it makes it easier for this purpose. You can still find the originals in my collection to verify that those pictures really originate from text and are not some kind of Photoshop trick or something like that. I also flipped some of the ASCII images, if the centerfold was in landscape format instead of the usual “letter” style format.

I also was concerned about copyright issues that this might cause with Playboy Magazine, but old school RTTY (teletype) enthusiast and collector of teletype text art, John Sheetz (K2AGI), mentioned in an interview for the BBS Documentary with Jason Scott Sadofsky that Playboy Magazine actually embraced this stuff and even published one of Don Royer’s (WA6PIR) centerfold creations in text in one of their print issues.

I hope that Playboy still has this attitude today and will see this publication as free promotion and advertisement for their current print magazine.

I found out during my research that there are sometimes multiple ASCII art versions of the same photograph, which is pretty interesting, because it shows the different styles and quality of the text artists who created those ASCII images. Let’s get started! Click the thumbnails to watch the larger versions of the images below.

The Link of the thumbnail version of the ASCII links to the PNG image version of the ASCII. I added links to the original ASCII text files below each ASCII thumbnail. I also added a link there to an image where it shows the photograph and the ASCII side by side (JPG). Please note that the ???side by side??? images are not proportional to the originals they are merely meant for illustration purposes.

The Centerfold Miss March 1964, Nancy Scott, for example was used for three ASCII images in my collection.

nude1315_1964-03_Nancy_Scott joan calgirl nude1315_miss1964-03_Nancy_Scott

original ASCIIside by side

org ASCIIside-by-side

org ASCIIside-by-side

Miss May 1970, Jennifer Liano was used for two ASCII images. One of them used the wrong name for the girl and called it “Kathy” instead of “Jennifer”.

nude365-7005 kathy nude365-miss may1970

original ASCIIside by side

original ASCIIside by side

Miss January 1970, Jill Taylor

nude362-7001 nude362-miss beloil miss january1970 nude363-jill taylor-miss january1970

original ASCIIside by side

original ASCIIside by side

Miss February 1969, Lorrie Menconi

nude399-6902 nude399-miss-february1969 nude1319-miss-february1969

original ASCIIside by side

original ASCIIside by side

Miss October 1964 – Rosemarie Hillcrest

Noticed that the two ASCII images are a ???mirror??? of the photograph? This cannot be coincidence. I assume that there is another photograph that is virtually the same, but matching the pose in the ASCIIs. I had the same with the image of Marianne Gravatte. The used photograph was a mirror of the widely popular centerfold picture, but I was able to dig up the not so popular photograph. I hope that I will find the one for Rosemarie Hillcrest too. However, I decided to show them, even though it is not EXACTLY the source photograph, but it is coming close enough to it for all intents and purposes here :).

6410-Playmate_1964_10-RoseMarie_Hillcrest 6410-ingrid 6410-anna

original ASCIIside by side

original ASCIIside by side

Now the single match gallery for the cases where I only have one ASCII matching one original photographs.

Miss January 1966, Judy Tyler
6601-nude1316-6601
6601-nude1316-another_playmate
original ASCIIside by side
Miss December 1966, Susan Bernard
6612-nude360-66126612-nude360-miss_nov1967
original ASCIIside by side
Miss November 1968, Paige Young
6811-nude304-6811
6811-nude304-paige
original ASCIIside by side
Miss December 1968, Cynthia Myers
6812-morgana-6812 6812-morgana
original ASCIIside by side
Miss October 1969, Jean Bell
6910-nude1320-6910 6910-nude1320-ms_black_is_beautyful_playmate_oct1969
original ASCIIside by side
Miss November 1969, Claudia Jennings
6911-nude361-6911 6911-nude361-muss_november_1969
original ASCIIside by side
Miss October 1970, Mary & Madeleine Collinson
7010-nude1321-7010 7010-nude1321-_the_7010-misses_october_1970
original ASCIIside by side
Miss October 1971, Claire Rambeau
7110-roxanne-7110 7110-roxanne
original ASCIIside by side
Miss March 1972, Ellen Michaels
7203-cloe-7203 7203-cloe
original ASCIIside by side
Miss January 1973, Miki Garcia
7301-nude306-7301 7301-Nude306-MissJanuary1973
original ASCIIside by side
Miss December 1973, Christine Maddox
7312-nude366-7312 7312-nude366-christine-miss_december1973
original ASCIIside by side
Miss April 1978, Pamela Jean Bryant
7804-nude388-7804 7804-nude388-pamela_bryant_miss_april_1978
original ASCIIside by side
Miss July 1978, Karen Morton
7807-nude303-7807 7807-Nude303-missjuly1978
original ASCIIside by side
Miss January 1980, Gig Gangel
8001-nude384_198001_Gig_Gangel_CF 8001-nude384-Gig_Gangel_Ms_January1980
original ASCIIside by side
Miss July 1980, Teri Peterson
8007-nude1313-8007 8007-nude1313-teri_peterson-ms_july1980
original ASCIIside by side
Miss August 1982, Cathy St. George
8208-nude394-8208 8208-nude394-miss_august1982
original ASCIIside by side
Miss July 1983, Ruth Guerri
8307-nude368--8307 8307-nude368-miss_july1983
original ASCIIside by side
Miss March 1984, Dona Speir
8403-nude372-8403 8403-nude372-dona-created_april1984
original ASCIIside by side
Miss April 1984, Lesa Ann Pedriana
8404-nude373-8404 8404-nude373-april-created_april1984
original ASCIIside by side
Miss June 1984, Tricia Lange
8406-nude374-8406 8406-nude374-miss_june1984
original ASCIIside by side
Miss March 1971, Cynthia Hall
Playmate_1971_03_Cynthia_Hall_CF MsMar71
original ASCIIside by side
Miss August 1960 – Elaine Paul
6008-Org kelly
original ASCIIside by side
Miss October 1960 – Kathy Douglas
nude1317-ms october1967-Kathy Douglas-Miss Oct1960-28879_196010_122_136lo nude1317-ms october1967
original ASCIIside by side
Morganna Roberts – The Kissing Bandit
nude330-morganna the kissing bandit-3a82 - Morganna Roberts nude330-morgana the kissing bandit
original ASCIIside by side
Miss July 1972 Carol O’Neal
7207-Playmate_1972_07-Carol_O''Neal 7207-susan
original ASCIIside by side
Miss “Ape Girl” – Victoria Principal – 09/1973
nude342-ms victoria principal-ape girl-playboy sep1973-large-41869_210_123_248lo nude342-ms victoria principal-ape girl-playboy sep1973
original ASCIIside by side
Miss December 1976 – Karen Hafter
nude353-miss karen hafter-dec1978playmate-32540_jc-PB-197612-033_KarenHafter_123_237lo nude353-miss karen hafter-dec1978playmate
original ASCIIside by side
Miss January 1974 – Nancy Cameron
nude357-heads or tails-miss jan1974-50918_197401b_Nancy_Cameron_CF_AltSize_122_48lo nude357-heads or tails-miss jan1974
original ASCIIside by side
Miss June 1983 – Marianne Gravatte
nude1312-marianne gravatte-playmate of the year1983-88472_1983-06_Marianne_Gravatte_7145_123_557lo nude1312-marianne gravatte-playmate of the year1983
original ASCIIside by side
Alberto Vargas Girl “Topless Batgirl”
batgirl-org batgirl-ascii1
original ASCIIside by side
Playboy 12/1972 Cover Image
nude323-org nude323-ascii1
original ASCIIside by side
Alberto Vargas Girl from March 1968
nude324-org
nude324-ascii1
original ASCIIside by side
Miss September 1966 – Dianne Chandler
Nude328-org
nude328-ascii1
original ASCIIside by side
Alberto Vargas Girl from July 1972
nude329-org nude329-ascii1
original ASCIIside by side
Alberto Vargas Girl from April 1973
nude333-org nude333-ascii1
original ASCIIside by side
Alberto Vargas Girl from April 1972
nude336-org
nude336-ascii1
original ASCIIside by side
Alberto Vargas Girl from March 1968
nude375-org nude375-ascii1
original ASCIIside by side
Miss July 1983 – Ruth Guerri
nude389-org nude389-ascii1
original ASCIIside by side
Alberto Vargas Girl from February 1972
nude395-org nude395-ascii1
original ASCIIside by side

That’s it and all that I got so far. I try to find more matches, but it’s not that easy. The names and notes of the ASCII images is not always very detailed and some times even wrong. In some cases is the original also not the Playboy centerfold, but something else.

YOUR HELP IS NEEDED! There are still plenty of ASCII art pieces in my gallery that need to be matched to their reference photograph (Playboy Magazine Centerfolds, Pictorials and other Photo Sources). I wrote another blog post about this project, where I also provide some more information and several downloads that help with finding the original photos for the remaining ASCII art images. See details here. Hey, looking at beautiful nude girls is not a bad job at all :)

I hope that you liked my discoveries. Let me know in the comments below.

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Roy/SAC Homepage

 Post details 

Categories: 7BIT ASCII history text art
Tags: No Tags
Published on: March 18, 2009

 Comments (4) 

  1. Matthias says:

    cheers ROY, i love your art and site.

    much respect & scene love,

    matthias

  2. Anonymous says:

    I like the work but could you add the text files of the work, not just pics? that would be great

  3. I will be thinking about how to better integrate this post with my site section with the ASCII Nudes where I actually link to the ASCII versions of the pictures (but not to the original photographs themselves). I have a little site design/usabilaty issue on my hands here :(

  4. Mr/Ms Anonymous.. see, I listen to my readers. I added links to the original ASCIIs in text format underneath the thumb image of the ASCII, which still links to the PNG version of the ASCII.

    I also added another link to each ASCII for a side by side comparison of each ASCII with the photograph.

    Please note that the side by side pictures are not proportional and were meant for illustration purposes only.

    I hope that will work for you guys. Let me know what you think. Thanks.

    Cheers!

  5. […] posted earlier this month the article ASCII Art Nudes versus Original Playboy Centerfolds where I show for several ASCII Nude pictures of my ASCII Nudes collection the original photograph […]

  6. […] artists as reference accessible directly within the gallery. Previously those were only available via an older blog post of […]

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