New ASCII Art Contest at deviantART

Hello Everybody,

After a series of posts that were relatively unrelated to ASCII art and text art in general, now a pure one that ONLY talks about ASCII Art and nothing else. Ha, I knew that you missed those hehe.

Maija Haavisto aka DiamonDie organized another ASCII art contest over at deviantART.com. You might be familar with DiamonDie from Finland, because I have her ASCII Art Tutorial up on my site as part of my ASCII Art Academy for some time now.


What is she looking for?

Draw something in ASCII that I haven't seen before, something creative in technique, style, concept and/or subject matter. You could make something surreal, abstract, political, dadaistic or otherwise strange.

What is she NOT looking for?

... no kittens, Pikachus, roses or Santa Claus, unless you can make them stand out somehow.

No pornographic entries or anything that would violate the U.S. law, pretty much everything else goes.

There are the following technical requirements, because ASCII art is a bit too broad and not everything that falls under the term Text art or ASCII art is allowed for this contest.

• The entry must be an ASCII picture, of at least 10x10 and at most 80x200 characters (that's 80 characters per line and 200 lines). The entry must be drawn in a fixed-width font. Sorry, no extended characters (8-bit), colored ASCII or ANSI this time. If you don't know what this means, make sure you only use characters included in the green part of this table.
• The entry must be original and created by hand. Entries made with an image to ASCII converter are not taken into account. If your image looks converted or ripped, you will need to present a proof that you made it (ie. so called "step files", save the picture into several different files while drawing it).
• You can enter at most three pictures. You don't have to be a DA member to enter*.

* Just FYI. The deviantART membership is free and should not have been a hurdle for you in the first place that prevents you from entering the contest (or it would have been a very lame excuse if you would be using this excuse as a reason not to enter). Well, she does not make it a requirement this time, so it does not matter. One lame excuse was just eliminated before it even started hehe.

Submissions

Send a link to your artwork for download (you can upload it free at MediaFire.com or also at your account at deviantART (which is a bit trickier) via a personal note to DiamonDie using the deviantART internal mail system or via direct email to maija AT writeme DOT com.

Deadline

The deadline of the contest is 7/7/2008, July 7, 2008, no matter how you interpret the date (its the same in US and UK date format) :)

Prizes
What is in it for you?

The winner gets a "Dark Domain DVD" from ACiD Productions shipped free to your place anywhere on this planet (but where mail can be delivered). So living not in Europe or the United States is also not a reason for not entering the contest. :)

Dark Domain is a DVD-Rom (for the Computer), which contains text art from 1987 to the present, art packs, emags, text files and more. A complete and detailed list of all files included on this DVD-ROM may be found at www.darkdomain.org/allfiles.zip. The DVD is full and almost impossible to check entirely, unless you have some months of time to spare to look at the tens of thousands of images, ASCII and ANSI art pieces.

I list the DVD for a long time already at my scene related "online shop" here at RoySAC.com. There are a lot of other nice gems that might be of interest for you (sorry, but not part of the prizes for this contest)

To read all the details about the contest yourself, check out the original news post by DiamonDie at deviantART.com. Happy drawing and good luck to you.

Cheers!
Carsten aka Roy/SAC

p.s. I might throw in something as well, like I did for Diamondie's ASCII art contest in 2006. I just don't know what I should throw in and if I should make it a surprise again as I did last time. I will check with Maija ;-).

Baby Girls Olympic Games 2012 with Broken Logo

I just came across Seth Godins post about the unveiling of the new Olympic Games logo for the 2012 Olympic Summer Games in London UK.

The official post (or whatever you want to call it) was actually made by the BBC.CO.UK on June 4, 2007. The ugliness of the logo made me actually create an account at the BBC website and leave this comment about the logo.

Quote (myself):

This is is ugliest logo for an important event like this I have ever seen. Starting with the colors and ending with the shapes. It looks like the "broken Olympics" or the baby girls Olympics logo that was dropped by one of the baby girls when the pampas slipped.

The worst thing is that:

1. £400,000 were wasted on this piece of junk


2. a bunch of official guys brag about it as if it would be the best thing since Michelangelo's "The Last Judgement" painting on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in Rome.

I added the logo to the post only for one reason. As proof that I am not talking BS here and that it is really as ugly as I said it is.

For this amount of money could they have gotten tens of thousands great logos designed by artists from around the world. They could have just started a contest at deviantART.com and offered £10,000 as prize money. That's it. Problem solved.

I actually recommend that they still do that. It's still enough time to fix the "broken logo".

Gesundheit!
Carsten aka Roy/SAC

deviantART and Web 2.0

It was a post that was several months in the making. I was having it on my to-do list for months, but was finally able to finish and publish it.

I am not talking about a post here, but at my Blog at ReveNews.com, which is related to internet and affiliate marketing. The blog post I did is titled "User Generated Advertising Web 2.0 Style" and is about leveraging communities like deviantART.com for your business.

deviantART is a great place for businesses who want to do "different" advertising, 100% Web 2.0 style. I suggested the use of dA design contests to have artists create designs for any kind of thing you can come up with. I explained the benefits like this:

You engage people, inspire creativity and get authentic designs, which are honest and pure. It could be a web 2.0 style advertising campaign, very viral (speaking of buzz marketing).

It's a pretty long post, but I recommend to read it, if you are interested in this sort of things.



I did a contest at deviantART myself last year. It was not a design contest, but it was a contest to promote my Text art site RoySAC.com a little bit. I blogged about it too. I hope this provides some inspiration. Just think outside the box from time to time and try out new things. This is true no matter what you are doing.

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

ASCII plus Animation is ASCIImation

A fellow ASCII artist with the pseudonym "Skylined" over at deviantART sent me something cool and unique and makes me rethink about "the death" of text art in the internet age. It's pretty much kicking butt for something that was announced dead by Microsoft over a decade ago.

He does not have a real website (the URL I got works sometimes and sometimes it does not) and what he did can not be displayed at deviantART, so I asked him for permission to put it on my website and he was okay with it.

What he did is a combination of Text art and cool JavaScript coding to get the desired effects.

The first one is a horizontal scrolling "Star Field Effect" emulation, which used to be very popular during the end of the eighties and nineties with demosceners and crack intro coders alike.

It also "fades in" and out an ASCII logo, which can be easily replaced by different logos, because it is pulled dynamically from an external text file on the fly. No coding necessary.

You can see the real-time "Star Field" animation here or click on the image.

The second piece is even cooler in my opinion, but the graphic is not as easy to replace. It is possible though, but you need to know a bit about JavaScript that you done screw it up.

The Animation contains two main parts. The first one is a "Morph" effect between four different ASCII logos, which are also cool and done by Skylined himself.

I like the "Shark-like" logo the best, because it looks even more 3D with the morph effect than it did already without it.

But his ASCII called "Julia at Awakenings", which was a contribution to the Non-Existent ASCII contest at deviantART in November/December last year is also pretty cool.

He did not win unfortunately, although he was my personal favorite and got my #1 vote (I was one of the judges of the contest).

The second part is actually more impressive and something for the coders at heart, what I am unfortunately not. It shows a real-time Mandelbrot fractal look-alike zoom and rotation and was programmed entirely (no ASCII logo).

Check the Morph and Mandelbrot Animation here or click on one of the images.

Cheers!
Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Contest Ruling Is Finally In - Special Bonus Prizes Revealed

The ruling for the ANSI/ASCII Text Art contest at deviantART is finally in. I blogged about the end of it and my personal favorite about a week ago. Unfortunately did the other judges not agree with me.

What surprised me a bit was that skylined's entry did not even make the top 5, but it shows how different the opinions of the 6 judges were. Being voted #1 by one judge does not make it a sure win.

Somebody that was voted #3 or #4 by all judges has a much higher chance of winning.

Here is how the judging works. Every Judge has 15 points to assign, 5 points to the #1, 4 points to the #2, 3 to #3, 2 to #5 and finally 1 point to the #1. This makes 90 points altogether for all 6 judges combined. 5 points does not look like that much anymore, right?

Anyway, all entries can be reviewed here if you want to check them out. The 5 Winners are the following:

Next to the official prizes will every one of the five winners get a one of my "deviantART ASCII" Mouse pads (since all winners were ASCIIs), a small Magnet of my "deviantART ANSI" print and a post card of my ANSI print as well. I hope the winners will like the little extra bonus prizes. Merry Christmas.

Cheers,

Carsten

Space Art - Prints and Calendars

Alex Gibson aka Sphereuk is another of my favorite artists at deviantART which I would like to introduce to my blog readers and subscribers.

I did something like this back in April already for the artist with the name Dilekt. I just discovered planet and space art at dA at the time. Space Art now makes up a considerable percentage of art in my dA Favorites and virtually 100% of my dA Wish list.

I think that this is a good Idea, because it extend the reach of these mostly young artists that are still students for the most part. Spheruk, who is from Great Britain, for example just finished his first semester at the university. He studies design (surprise) and wants to become a game designer.

Because of the time he has to dedicate for 3D art and rendering did he say that he has to cut down on the time for creating space art. I hope he will not stop doing it, because his Space and Planet artwork is amazing.

I sent Alex an Email last weekend and requested that he makes a Calendar available at the dA Print Shop with the IMO 12 best of his space art pieces.
He promised to create one and I am looking forward to be able to buy it.

Here are the 12 pieces of space art which I ask Spheruk to use for the calendar which will hopefully become available soon.







In the meantime check out the existing prints by Spheruk at the dA Shop. He gets a cut of the revenue his prints generate. So if you buy a print, you will help Alex out and increase his allowance. You might now that students are poor and are grateful for every extra dollar they can get.

I already bought two other calendars from two other artists which I would like to show you.

Sci-fi Scenery CALANDER by Swaroop.B.G.Prabhavathi aka Swaroop.		Reflections Calendar by Andrea G-Zenith aka Anjicle.

I also bought some more of my own designs. The dA ASCII and ANSI Mouse pads. They are great gifts and make some of my friends happy. It's a great gift, because it is personal and practical.


Enjoy!

Cheers
Carsten aka Roy/SAC

The ASCII/ANSI Contest Is Over

Last week did the ASCII and ANSI contest at deviantART end. You can see all contributions to the contest here. I already made my judgements, but a few are still outstanding. That means that no results are available yet.

Yet I still want to present my personal favorite. The artists name is Berend-Jan Wever aka skylined.

His contribution is the 7bit ASCII called "Julia at Awakenings". Here is a small version of the image. It is not original size. Click on the image to get to the deviation which is in original size that you can clearly see that it is made out of regular characters which you can find on your keyboard.



I like the style. I like the ASCII logo of his name actually even better. Especially this one. .






Yep, it's a shark. I think that the Idea alone is already astonishing, let alone the realization by using simple text characters.


The following two logos look like "Disco" style.. without the bright colors hehe. I don't like them as much, but they are somewhat cool anyway.

This one seems to be the predecessor of the contest entry. The Idea is already visible, but the realization is much simpler than for "Julia at Awakenings".




Well, I am looking forward to hear the ruling. More to that later this week.

The Non-Existent ASCII/ANSI contest extended!

The deadline for the deviantART ASCII/ANSI art contest, which I blogged about earlier this month, was extended for a few more days. This will be the last chance to enter and win some great prices for everybody with some Text art skills who has not entered the contest yet.

Also some other things changed a little. Here are the words from DiamonDie who is the initiator and organizer of the contest.

Sorry for the bit of a late notice, but the deadline of the Non-Existent ASCII/ANSI contest has been pushed back by two weeks, making 9th of December the new deadline.

Due to the very small amount of ANSI entries we'll probably have to merge the two contest categories, but in that case we'll be offering prizes (subscriptions and DVDs) to five winners. That means you stand a good chance of winning something!

So those of you who have said you'll participate but haven't and those who have had their entries disqualified and have agreed to fix them, you've got two more weeks left. Even if you had missed the original contest announcement you still have time to draw an entry. So start typing already!

There will also be a surprise which will be announced AFTER the contest (or it would not be a surprise, wouldn't it? :) )

So you better get the Text Editors on the coming days and get something delivered before the new deadline.

You can check the contests rules here, if you haven't already done so earlier.

ANSI and ASCII Text Art as Print!

Mhhh... It seems that I post at my ASCII and ANSI Text Art blog always in pairs now. I should better plan those things I guess, but the heck, who cares.

Okay, here is post number two for today.

I took the new deviantART Prints Service for a spin, which was launched parallel with the
new deviantART shop. I made two of my deviations available for purchase for your and my own pleasure.

Fans of ANSI and ASCII Text will probably love it. I already ordered one of each for myself.

For all the Fans of dA and ANSI Text Art is the left piece available (click the image for the LARGE Version, 1390x1165) and for all Fans of the ASCII Text Art the right one.

Buy ANSI Print	Buy ASCII Print

Following formats and item types are available for each of the two with the price right next to it (I ordered for myself the Mousepads):

Canvas Canvas Prints 28x36 cm $78.95 Regular Prints Lustre Prints 25x30 cm $15.49 Matte Prints 25x30 cm $12.79 Glossy Prints 25x30 cm $12.79 Magnets Small Magnet $4.95 Large Magnet $6.95

Postcards Matte Postcard $2.49 Glossy Postcard $2.49 Other Mouse Pad Mouse Pad $9.95 Coaster Set of 4 Coasters $20.25

Enjoy!
Carsten aka Roy/SAC

ASCII and ANSI Art Contest at deviantART

It's a bit late for it, but better late than never. There is also still plenty of time for people that are interested to participate.

You Text Artists out there, get your editors started up and start creating some nice Text Art. This is also a good chance for newbies to get your art seen by others and useful feedback.

DiamonDie over at deviantART.com launched an ASCII / ANSI Contest with the topic "Non-Existent"

The Deadline for the contest is 25th of November 2006. The entries can be edited until the deadline. You can read the details and Contest Rules in DiamondDie's News Article at deviantART.

Is it worth your time to participate in this contest? You bet it is! Not only fame and fortune can be gained, but great prizes too.

Okay no fortune , but a lot of fame and did I mention the prizes? How do these prizes look like? Pretty, don't they?

Prizes
1st prize in both categories ASCII and ANSI:
a copy of the Dark Domain DVD from ACiD Productions and a one-year subscription to DeviantART

2nd prize in both categories ASCII and ANSI:
a six-month subscription to DeviantART

3rd prize in both categories ASCII and ANSI:
a three-month subscription to DeviantART



I will be one of the judges hence not take part in the contest myself. I am looking forward to see your contributions.

You can read all the details about the contest, including the detailed rules, background information about ANSI/ASCII Art contests in general, ASCII and ANSI tools used, Tutorials and more in her Article about the Contest Announcement.

Hop over to deviantART.com to check it out. If you don't have an Account yet, then it is about time to get one; it's free so there is no reason not to.

Good Luck and no, I can not be bribed :)
Cheers,

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Ad Hunt Contest Winner Announced at dA

Well, deviantART.com is up again and I was able to announce the Winner of my little "Ad Hunt" Contest at my deviantART Journal.

I also got a response back from the lucky Winner. A female deviant from "Down Under" with the dA User Name ShellDevil-Art.

She wanted me to pick from her dA Print Wish-list for her, so I did. The order is placed and soon will the reward be on its way to the land of the kangaroos and koalas.

Here are some of her photographs which she made available at her Gallery on her dA User page.

Now I Can Dance

Mushroom Fairy

Lost At Sea

Flower Series 01

Nice, don't you think?

The overall positive response makes me seriously consider to repeat the contest again this year. Some very disappointed, because they found out about it too late, but thought that it was a very cool and unique contest they have never seen before at dA.

I believe it was a win-win combination. Everybody had fun. Nobody had to do stupid things. What more can I ask for?

Cheers,
Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Ad Contest Winner Announcement delayed - dA down!

What a bummer. I just wanted to announce the winner of my DeviantArt "Ad Hunt" Contest, but the whole site is down.

I was lucky that it was accessible earlier. I contacted the Winner before I wanted to make the announcement. I hope the Winner got the message.

Well, there is not much I can do at the moment but wait that it is up again.
An unfortunate delay which forces me to change my schedule.

I hope that it is nothing serious.

Digital Art which is not from this World

I am an artist at deviantART myself and was browsing around on dA, checking out Art posted by other artists (one of the normal things to do as a "deviant").

I came across an Artist yesterday that caught my attention more than it normally does.

He goes by the Artist Name Dilekt (Dilekt Artist Homepage at dA).

Below are the pieces that are available as Print. I hope you will enjoy them as much as I do.

	Empyrean by Dilekt Large View | Buy Print		Foretold Prophesy by Dilekt Large View | Buy Print
	Glacial Haven by Dilekt Large View | Buy Print		Inner Soul by Dilekt Large View | Buy Print
	The Inevitable by Dilekt Large View | Buy Print		Throne Of God by Dilekt Large View | Buy Print
Full Galery of Dilekt Art @ deviantART.com

I loved his art right away and added 6 of his pieces that are available as print to my wishlist (others can buy me as gift) and 8 others to my favorites (that others can see which Art from from other Artists I like).

If you want one to put on your wall (not computer :)), no Problem. Prints are available and cost only between $2 and $24 dollars (without frame) depending on size and print type (lustre, matte or glossy) plus about $5 for shipping (2nd day air and special packaging). You should get it within 3-4 days, if you order today.

The Fool on April Fools day

Lolly, an Admin at deviantART.com seized the opportunity on April Fools day to fool a lot of Deviant's with his article about the new Web 2.0 powered mock-up of deviantART.com.

This Article caused comments from thousands and thousands of mostly shocked Deviant's worldwide. C'mon, this joke was so obvious, that even a blind man could have seen it.

A close look at the mock-up itself and you can tell right away, that this is a joke, not to mention that the mock-up looks ugly and not dA worthy nor make the shown features any sense for a site like deviantART.

The thing with the creative commons license "NC-1701-D" was actually funny (Trekkies know) and the "powered by AJAX V1.5" should trigger a laugh or at least a smile from any Web Developer.

I could not resist and jump on to this bandwagon and counter proposed an alternative mock-up for a new version of deviantART.com. The people that were not fooled had a good laugh. I am always amazed how easy people can be fooled.

The Mock ups

Lolly's version of deviantART with Web 2.0 Technology, including Tag Cloud.



My Alternative Mock up of deviantART.com



And while I had so much fun, did I create a fun Version of "my" Windows Desktop, which can be seen here.



I also did something more serious and finished my entry for the "Art of Threes Resolution" contents which is titled "The Three Styles of ..." and about the Three Styles of the PC Underground (Text) Art Scene during the time of when BBS's ruled the earth and the Internet was still in its infancies.



Enjoy
Carsten a.k.a. Roy/SAC

31 Pieces of Art added to my deviantART Page

I spent several hours today on my home page at deviantART. I added 31 ASCII's, ANSI's and VGA's from my personal "best of" collection.

It wasn't the upload of the art that took so much of my time. What took the time was writing comments for every single uploaded piece of my art. Some Comments were quite detailed and have some inside details about the Group, BBS, FTP Server (etc.) the Art Work was created for.Also some interesting stories about the actual circumstances that lead to the creation of the individual piece. It's often not only interesting to read for the people that were also part of the scene at those times and can personally relate to the things I am talking about. It is also interesting for the viewer who never had anything to do with the whole thing and is just interested in the classic art of ASCII and ANSI Text Art and Low-Res VGA (320x200 256 Colors or 640x480 16 Colors).

Whatever the case, I believe it will be worthwhile for you to stop by and have a look for yourself. Carsten a.k.a. Roy/SAC