The SAC – Superior Art Creations All-Time Member List Project Update

I am trying for a while now to create an all time Superior Art Creations member list. This is unfortunately no easy task, because the information in the SAC.NFO files of the SAC Pack releases were not always as well maintained as they should have been. I don’t want to point and blame anybody, but its is pretty tough to get a clear picture of who is who and who was in when as what, with the amount of information that can be extracted from the releases of the group itself.

Here is what I came up with so for. The stuff that is high lighted with an orange background is where I would be happy, if anybody has an answer to my question or the missing information, whatever the case might be.

Also, the whole last section with “Non-Contributing Temp Members” is open for input. Listed there are names that were mentioned that they are members of SAC, but I could not find any contribution of those guys in any of the SAC art packs. Maybe they did something under the name of SAC, but nothing that found its way into an art pack. If that is the case, then I want of course give the credits where credits are due and remove that person from the “non-contributing” section.

If you know any of the folks where questions are still in the room or if you have any tip how or where I could find out more about them etc. Please let me know. The comments section of this blog post would do just fine.

I’d appreciate it. Thanks.

#	Handles / Aliases	File Prefix(es)	Country	PPE	PRG	VGA	MFX	ANS	ASC	ADM	Notes/Comments
Contributing Members (Included in Art Packs)
1	2Fast	2F	Germany						X
2	Acen	AC	Germany				X
3	Allanon	ALN	Sweden						X
4	Antibody	ANTI / AB	Denmark			X		X	X
5	Argon Factor	AR	Germany				X
6	Arlequin	ARL / AR	Argentina					X	X
7	Asphyx	ASX	France			X		X	X
8	Axess	AXS	Germany			X	X
9	Barium	B5	n/a			X		X	X
10	Bazilla	BAZ	Germany			X
11	Brane	BNE	Sweden						X
12	Cokine	COK	Sweden			X
13	Comrade	COM	Canada		X
14	Creator	CRE	Australia			X
15	Creature of Hell	COH / CH	USA			X	X	X
16	Crome	CROME / CRM	Germany				X
17	cRu / Maverick	CRU	Germany					X	X
18	Crusader	CDR	Sweden						X
19	D0n	DN	n/a						X
20	DAC	DAC	Germany				X
21	Dalezy / The Unconsciousness / Animal	DLZ / TU / AN	Germany				X
22	Dark Star / Puschel	DS / PL	Germany			X		X	X
23	Davek	DKNY	USA					X	X
24	Desolation Angel	DA	USA			X
25	Dipswitch	DIP	Germany						X
26	Don Rapello	DON	Finland						X
27	Dream Design	DD	Germany		X	X		X
28	DW0	DW0	n/a					X			What's the full name?
29	Eboy	EB	Finland			X		X	X
30	Edge	ED	USA			X
31	Ex0	EX0	Australia					X	X
32	F0st	FST / FS	France			X			X
33	Ferrex	FRX / FX	Germany		X	X		X	X
34	Flames	FLAMES	Germany			X			X
35	Fourth	4TH	n/a						X
36	Geareo	MYD	n/a						X
37	Giovanni	GIO	Germany				X
38	Grap	GP	Germany		X
39	GrymmJack	GJ	USA						X
40	GTI	GTI	Canada			X		X	X
41	Helix	HLX	USA						X
42	Hetero	HT	Germany		X	X		X	X
43	HKultra	HKU	n/a			X
44	IxLover Buddha	IX	n/a			X			X
45	[K]	K	Germany		X	X
46	Kaethe	KT	Germany					X	X
47	Kenet	K	France			X
48	KMX	KMX	Poland		X						What does KMX stand for?
49	Maktone	MT / M1	Sweden				X
50	Markgoh	MG	Canada						X
51	Marky	MY / M	Germany			X			X
52	Matador	MTD	Russia		X				X
53	Mattey	MATTEY	n/a			X
54	McBarn	MB	Sweden				X
55	Midfit	MF	Germany		X
56	Moolok	MOO	Germany			X		X
57	Mr.Death	MRDEATH / MRD	Sweden				X
58	Mr.Jezus	MRJEZUS	Finland			X
59	Mydknight	MID	Canada						X
60	Myth	MYTH	Germany		X
61	Neophyte	NP	Germany		X
62	Nerv	NERV / NR	France			X		X	X
63	Nova	N	Australia			X
64	Pasha	P	Germany			X			X
65	PDZ	PDZ	n/a						X		PDZ = Podzi?
66	Poldi	PD	Germany			X		X	X
67	Quasar	QS	Sweden						X
68	Rainer	RN	Germany				X
69	Raiser	RS	Germany					X	X
70	Rave	RV	Germany			X		X	X
71	Rez	REZ	Netherlands		X		X				Is Rez an abbreviation?
72	Roodolph	ROO	Poland						X
73	Roy	ROY	Germany/USA	X	X	X		X	X
74	RZ	RZ	n/a						X		RZ = Rahzel? Uses }8]a or }8] as sig in pics
75	S!	S!	n/a						X		S! = Stylez or S! = Serges or somebody else?
76	Scour	SCR	USA						X
77	Senser	SNS	France			X		X	X
78	Sergeon Cuts	SERGEON	USA			X
79	Stonehedge	SH	Germany				X
80	Shaq	SQ	Russia						X
81	Shot	ST	Germany					X
82	Silent	SiL	n/a			X
83	sOul	SOUL	Germany				X
84	Spectrum	SPC	Germany		X
85	Spoon	SPN	Germany				X
86	Sprocket	SPROCKET	Norway			X
87	Squizzy	SQZ	Netherlands						X
88	Strike Light	SL	Canada					X	X
89	Svenzzon	SVENZZON / SVEN / SV	n/a				X		X
90	Synec	SY	Germany		X
91	Techbit	TB	Canada			X
92	Teepak	TPK	Germany			X		X	X
93	Toxic Trancer	TOX	Germany				X
94	v0uck	VK	n/a						X
95	W.O.T.W.	WOTW	Germany				X
96	Webpige0	W0	n/a			X		X	X
SAC PPE Coders (Had no file prefix)
97	Cyz		Germany	X
98	Monster		Germany	X
99	Fox		Germany	X
100	Cyber Brain		Germany	X
Administrative Members
Internet Coordinators, except for Idiana who did Group Management and Organization
101	Hoziris		Israel							X
102	Cercyon		Germany							X
103	Corex		Germany							X
104	Idiana		Germany							X
Guest Contributors
Included in one or more SAC Pack releases, but never had status of SAC member
n/a	Z80	Z80	Germany		1
Non Contributing Temp Members
This list may includes members where I could not match them up confidentially with a file prefix from the pack.
It could also be that one person is listed with multiple nick names or real name.
If you know of any contributions to the group and it to the comments please.
	Ripper		Germany
	Prosthesis		Finland
	Paledeth		Sweden
	White Zombie	TWZ	Denmark
	Darkheart		Sweden
	Felix		Germany
	Timelord		Italy
	Necrotoad		Canada
	Nitrifik		Sweden
	Spinsane	SP	n/a
	Xeek	XK	n/a
	PODZI		n/a								Podzi = PDZ
	Stylez		Germany								Styles = S!?
	Serges		n/a								Serges = S!?
	Sick Doctor		n/a								Serges = Sick Doctor?
	Rahzel		n/a								Rahzel = RZ?
	Shady		Germany								Shady = S!?

Explanation of Columns
PPE = PCBoard BBS Tools Programmer (using PPL-PCBoard Programming Language, which are compiled to PPE’s)
PRG = Programmer/Coder of Intros, tools etc. such as the SACtros for SAC artpack releases.
VGA = Pixel Art Graphician and later also hi-res art via Photoshop etc.
MFX = Musician, mainly old-school tracker MOD modules (or FastTracker, ScreamTracker etc.)
ANS = ANSI text artist (like the image below)
ASC = ASCII text artist, 7-Bit and/or “high ASCII” (Block ASCII)
ADM = Administrative work, Internet Coordinator, Bot-Master (IRC) and those sorts of things)

I am feeling that we come slowly but surely closer to the goal of having a complete and correct all-time Superior Art Creations member list that I can post on the SAC section of the site as I promised to do so already two or some more years ago.

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Jason Scott from Textfiles.com Text-urized

I wrote a while back already a post about the online Image to Text (ASCII) converter tool at Photo2Text.com.

Back then I used Matt Cutts from Google as my Guinea-Pig to illustrate it’s capabilities. This is not the purpose of this blog post though. Shortly after I did my post, I played around with it a bit more. I experimented with a photograph of Jason Scott Sadofsky from Textfiles.com (who also did the DVD documentary “BBS – The Documentary”, which I highly recommend, if you are interested in the subject of Bulletin Board Systems)

I tweaked the source photo of him to get better results and saved them on my hard drive and then forgot about them until now. I stumbled across them by accident and thought that I should not hide them, or at least make them accessible for Jason himself.

I took the results from the converter and tweaked them a bit more in Photoshop, adding some color and stuff like that. You can see below the stages of my changes. Click on the thumbnail images for the larger original sized version of it.

Original 7-Bit ASCII as Image.  Download the original text ASCII file	Colors added	Final picture with background added and name tag

This is the final piece and I hope that Jason (and you too) will like it.

I also created an ANSI version of the photograph with the tool. It is only using the number characters 0-9, but a very small font. The result is good, but it looks to little like an ASCII to me, because of the font size.

This ANSI was actually created as a HTML document. You can see the original HTML/Text version here.

If you are interested in the subject of image to ASCII art conversion, I also suggest to check out my post where I reviewed a number of online and desktop image to text converter tools.

I also wrote a post about video to text conversion via the vlan video player with special conversion plug-in.

If the subject of ASCII and ANSI text art is new to you and you would like to learn more about this old school art form that actually pre-dates the computer, check out my ASCII Art Academy for more resources and information.

Semi-related: Did you see my post about ASCII/RTTY art nudes versus their original Centerfold Photographs?
I still need help with matching up more of the ASCIIs with their source photographs. You can help.

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Matching Nude ASCII Art Pieces with Playboy Centerfolds

I 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 that was used by the text artist.

I updated the original article, which showed the originals for 29 40 ASCII pieces, and added one more match that I found afterwards. Since then I even found two more matches, which I did not add to the article yet.

The obvious matches are taking care of and also the ones where the file name or content of the ASCII itself had useful and correct hints about the original photograph. I were also able to match a number of ASCII's to photographs where the ASCII had completely incorrect information, such as the wrong name of the girl.

Now it's tougher to find corresponding photographs and I could use some help with it. It is not such a bad job actually. You get to watch a lot of beautiful girls naked hehe.

I also ran into cases where I am not 100% sure, if I matched the ASCII with the right photograph. Like this one.

The arm position is right, the pose is the same. The breast size is about the same and the hair resembles also the photograph. I am pretty sure that I found the right photograph, but a second opinion would increase my confidence even more.

If you want to help matching ASCII pictures to Playboy photographs, then you will need in addition to the ASCII pictures from my gallery, also the Playboy Magazine photographs from all issues, right?

Guess what, I happen to have a collection of those :). I zipped the photographs up into one file for each decade of Magazine publications.

Playboy Magazine Centerfolds Photographs (Complete) and additional Photographs from the Mag:

• 50's (93 MB) http://www.mediafire.com/?jjnzwynyeyq
• 60's (92 MB) http://www.mediafire.com/?nyzmmwzgi2m
• 70's (111 MB) http://www.mediafire.com/?fjylwngwgjn
• 80's (110 MB) http://www.mediafire.com/?k1zmwfihqtz
• 90's (69 MB) http://www.mediafire.com/?tkgnnzi25ot
• 00's (269 MB) http://www.mediafire.com/?nnwdtzd5mod

Here is also a zip file with the collection of my work files. It includes PNG versions of all the ASCII art pictures and the already matched photographs. I also sorted the pictures where I did not find a match yet by the pose of the girl in the picture. I found out that this helps with finding a matching photograph. Poses like kneeling, sitting, lying and standing and "standing" broken down even further into "front", "behind", "left side" and "right side".

ASCII Nudes work Images
Zipped 38 MB* http://www.mediafire.com/?he22vyjndtj (Updated 04/2009)

*The 38 MB Zip file contains the photographs of the already matched pictures, the side by side pictures from my blog post, the original ASCII art pieces in text and PNG format, thumbnails and notes that might help with uncovering more original source photographs that were used by the text artists.

If you find matches, please post them in the comments section of this post. Post the PNG image file name of the ASCII picture and the image file name of the photograph that you believe to be the original.

Update: Including the picture above, I now have matched 40 ASCII art pieces and updated my original blog post with those matches. I matched "Anna", "Ingrid", "Kelly", "Susan", "nude330", "nude342", "nude353", "nude357", "nude1312" and "nude1317". I noticed that some of the originals used are not the Centerfolds itself, but other photographs from within the magazine as well (I am not surprised, but thought that I will mention it). My image collections contain some of those other images but by far not all of them. Also not included are the pictorials, which were also used for some of the ASCII art pieces.

Promo Video for ASCII Nude Collection

I also created a short promotional video for my ASCII Nudes collection and for my article about the match-up with Playboy Centerfolds. YouTube and MySpace made already a fuss out of it, because the video shows some nipples. It's not pornography for Christ's sake and the YouTube account warning for violation of their community guidelines was a bit too strong of a response for my taste.

 

So I created a censored version for YouTube and MySpace where all nipples are covered, even the ASCII nipples.

That makes the stuff look even more funny than I wanted. You can see for yourself what I mean by that.

I put the uncensored version up on Vimeo.com, which I used to embed the video into this blog post as well. You can download the uncensored natural version of this video in 720x480 pixels resolution and .AVI format (XVID) at Mediafire.com as always. Backup link to video on Vimeo.com. Enjoy!

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

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.

As of today, I was able to find the original photograph for 29 30 40 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.

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.

	original ASCII – side by side	org ASCII – side-by-side	org ASCII – side-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".

	original ASCII – side by side	original ASCII – side by side

Miss January 1970, Jill Taylor

	original ASCII – side by side	original ASCII – side by side

Miss February 1969, Lorrie Menconi

	original ASCII – side by side	original ASCII – side 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 :).

	original ASCII – side by side	original ASCII – side 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 original ASCII – side by side	Miss December 1966, Susan Bernard original ASCII – side by side	Miss November 1968, Paige Young original ASCII – side by side
Miss December 1968, Cynthia Myers original ASCII – side by side	Miss October 1969, Jean Bell original ASCII – side by side	Miss November 1969, Claudia Jennings original ASCII – side by side
Miss October 1970, Mary & Madeleine Collinson original ASCII – side by side	Miss October 1971, Claire Rambeau original ASCII – side by side	Miss March 1972, Ellen Michaels original ASCII – side by side
Miss January 1973, Miki Garcia original ASCII – side by side	Miss December 1973, Christine Maddox original ASCII – side by side	Miss April 1978, Pamela Jean Bryant original ASCII – side by side
Miss July 1978, Karen Morton original ASCII – side by side	Miss January 1980, Gig Gangel original ASCII – side by side	Miss July 1980, Teri Peterson original ASCII – side by side
Miss August 1982, Cathy St. George original ASCII – side by side	Miss July 1983, Ruth Guerri original ASCII – side by side	Miss March 1984, Dona Speir original ASCII – side by side
Miss April 1984, Lesa Ann Pedriana original ASCII – side by side	Miss June 1984, Tricia Lange original ASCII – side by side	Miss March 1971, Cynthia Hall original ASCII – side by side
Miss August 1960 - Elaine Paul   original ASCII – side by side	Miss October 1960 - Kathy Douglas original ASCII – side by side	Morganna Roberts - The Kissing Bandit original ASCII – side by side
Miss July 1972 Carol O'Neal original ASCII – side by side	Miss "Ape Girl" - Victoria Principal - 09/1973 original ASCII – side by side	Miss December 1976 - Karen Hafter original ASCII – side by side
Miss January 1974 - Nancy Cameron original ASCII – side by side	Miss June 1983 - Marianne Gravatte original ASCII – side 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

Time for Another ASCII and More

It has only been two months, a bit less actually, since I created my last piece of ASCII text art.

Well, I did it again. Actually more than just a logo as I did the last time for CPI. I also design the NFO file body and more. I will show you the details further down below. I am pretty proud of myself, because I did not use any of my old styles for this new ASCII. I tried something different. I think that the result is very good, but it will be for others to decide if that is the case or not.

I also created a FILE_ID.DIZ logo for them in oldskool ASCII (Amiga style), which I do not consider myself particular good at. I actually said always that oldskool ASCII's should stay where they belong, on the Amiga, where they look right and not on the PC, which displays them much different as you can see at my article about the different art styles in the underground text art scene.

While I had the creative urge going, I also created VGA pixel logos for the same group. It must have been their lucky weekend I guess. hehe.  It could also be that the release that they announced where this artwork will be used was highly motivating for me :)

The second VGA logo. Simple and much smaller than the first one. It can also be read much easier.

The VGA logos were used for a cracktro, together with an old pixel art font of mine, which I highlighted in a blog post last December. The font took me hours to create and I was a little bit disappointed that it was only used for one Genesis intro, coded by Synec, which was only used for one or two releases and that's it. That particular intro is also one of the few that I have problems with to capture and publish in video format :(

I am glad that it was now used again. The music is also cool. It was created by Paso from Berlin and Dytec (and Dynamix & Remedy, the Sysop of Ice Cream and the coder & musician of the Cebit1993 party winning Amiga 500 dentro called Vaginal Massacre).

The tune was also used on the PC once, also for a Genesis intro by Hetero, with graphics by Dream Design, together with a second song, which IMO sucked. A randomizer determined which of the two songs was played and it appeared to me that the shitty song was played much more often than this cool one by Paso. I am sure that he will be glad that one of his tunes was used again in a cracktro.

Okay, here is the screen capture video of the new cracktro:

RoORS Cracktro 2009 V2 from Carsten Cumbrowski on Vimeo.

You can download the video in AVI format (76 MB) here at Mediafire.com 

I hope that you like my new stuff. Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Convert Video to ASCII Text Art

Uh, third post in 2 days... that surprises even me. Hehe

It was by coincidence actually, but somebody at Mahalo Answers made me aware of the feature of the free VLC (VideoLan) video player to convert video images to color ASCII art (some would call this ANSI hehe) in real-time.

I thought that this is a cool feature, just by hearing about it. I downloaded the player and was unable to find the option for the ASCII art output, so I asked the guy at Mahalo Answers about it and luckily for me, he answered this question as well (a bit delayed, which made me drop the ball on it as well).

The feature is buried deeply within the configuration options of the player and not that easy to find.

To help you with this problem, see my step by step guide to enable the feature in the VideoLan player. Every step is illustrated with a screen shot, so that there should not be any excuses for why you could not set it up yourself properly. Start with getting the latest version of the VideoLan video player at VideoLan.org (note: the latest version does not have this feature anymore. See note at the end of the post for details). The player is available across platform, over a dozen different Linux and Unix distributions and versions. Binaries for Windows, Macintosh Mac OS X, BeOS and Syllable are also available by the way. It's released under the GNU License.

Step by Step Guide to Enable the Color ASCII Art Output Module Configuration in the VLC Video Player

1. Start the VLC/VideoLan media player and open any supported video file.

2. Click on "Settings" in the top menu navigation and select "Preferences"

3. Audio is selected by default at the left. Check out the bottom-right where you can find a check box labeled "Advanced Options", which should be unchecked (default). Check that box to enable the Advanced Options.

4. Back to the navigation to the left. Click on the plus sign next to "Video" in the preferences box to open the configuration tree node for the "Video" options.

5. Click on the "Output Modules" node

6. Change the "default" in the drop down options for video output module to "Color ASCII Art Video output"

7. Click "Save" in the lower left of the window

8. Stop the video that you opened, if it isn't stopped already or if you stopped it after step 1.

9. Press "Play" to re-start the video again with the new video output module

Here are some results of me playing with that option for some videos of mine to give you an idea of how the real-time converted video images look in text mode with colors. I am not sure yet, if the module sticks to the 16 pre-set colors defined for PC MS DOS ANSI, which would be really cool. It may uses other colors instead. I have to do some more tests to find that out.

 
Playing Around with the VLC Color ANSI Art Video Output Module from Carsten Cumbrowski on Vimeo.

You can download this video in AVI format at Mediafile.com.

The player itself is worth checking out in general, beyond the ASCII output feature, which is kind of a "hidden treasure" within the features set of this open source video player. It supports virtually all major video formats, including Mpeg, AVI, QuickTime MOV/MP4, Windows Media WMV/ASF, Macromedia/Adobe Flash (FLV), the open source Matroska, Real Media (RealPlayer), OGG, FLAC and even Midi and raw DV video, WAV, MP3 audio etc.

It can play back streaming video UDP, TCP and DCCP/RTP Unicast or Multicast, HTTP/FTP and MMS in addition to traditional DVD video and audio, Audio CD, Video CD and SVCD, DVB from Satellite, Digital TV and cable television. A lot of stuff for NO BUCK at all. You cannot beat free, or can you?!

Also check out my previous posts about ASCII and ANSI Text Animation:

• ASCII plus Animation is ASCIImation
• What is ANSI Animation or ANSImation?
• Beck ASCIImation and a Walking Man 7-Bit ASCII
• my ASCIImations and ANSI Animations Video Play List at YouTube
• Review of Image to Text (ASCII) Converters

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Update: I just learned that the current version of VLC (Version 0.9.8a, 16 MB) does not have the ASCII output feature anymore. I have VLC Player Version 0.8.6f Janus (wxWidget interface) from last year, where the feature is still there. You can download this older version here from my web site: vlc-0.8.6f-win32.zip (9.19 MB). I don't know why they would remove such a nice feature from their player. Mhhh.

Time Travel to the Era of the BBS and ANSI Animation

I am sorry for all the dead videos at my blog at the moment, but as I mentioned in my last post, my primary YouTube account is currently in status "suspended". I tried to contact YouTube several times via email and fax (yeah, that machine that sends paper over the phone wires). I also tried to call them, but if you do not know the extension of the person you want to reach then you got stuck in an automated computer menu jungle or the system hangs up on you.

I complained about this horrible support at one of the business blogs I write for and home that I will hear something from YouTube within this year or so. I have not given up my account yet. I probably lost the hundreds of subscribers, but I hope for YouTube that my 160+ videos are still okay.

I still have my other YouTube account with the user name "sacreleases" where I upload demos, intros and cracktro videos recordings and ANSI animations or ASCIImations. That account has over 200 videos available for watching. In the case that you did not notice, but I made the first 199 videos accessible from the RoySAC.com homepage via a YouTube JavaScript widget.

One Video that I uploaded last night was the ANSI animation by Jed and Tracer of ACiD Productions for the BBS "The Bog" from around 1992. I added audio to it, just for the fun of it and to support the visual images. I did a voiceover for an ANSI animation earlier, if you remember, for the BBS "Korova Milkbar" and the animation Blade Runner of ACiD did for it.

Here is the video of the new ANSI animation with voiceover for "The Bog".



Backup Link to Video at YouTube.com.

I also expanded the page about my old BBS, Closed Society, because I stumbled over an old partial backup of the PCBoard installation and tried to make it run, just to see, if that is possible. To my amazement was this actually possible and I was able to get one node up. I captured a browsing session and made a video out of it. The file listings were broke unfortunately so I could not show how they looked like with the file_id.diz content nicely added to the file descriptions and the "FS" PPE by PWA in action to highlight, view and mark files for download.

I added some more gimmick to the video capture and some sound. For whatever stupid reason did most video sharing websites messed up the sound. I tried 50,000 things to get it right, but none worked. The funny thing is that I have videos with the same sounds that work perfectly fine. It's a miracle to me and beyond comprehension.

Luckily for you and me did at least one video sharing website get it right and that's the one that I used for the embedded video version that now follows.


Time Travel to the Era of the BBS V3

I hope you enjoyed the short trip back in time. Stop sobbing! It is over, live with it! We all have to, including myself. However, it was still nice to forget about the hard facts and truth for a couple minutes.

Btw. If you like the video and would like to have/see it in nice and clear 640x480 pixels resolution, I have good news for you. I put the video in AVI file format up on Mediafire.com for free download. It is about 67 MB in size. Here is the link.

Enjoy and Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

ANSI Art Tutorials for my ASCII Art Academy

Good news!

I extended the ASCII Art Academy with several new tutorials.

Only one of the new tutorials is for 7-bit ASCII, but hey, there I had already seven to begin with. The additional tutorial was created by "Cain" and it demonstrates how to draw a cool 7-bit newskool ASCII Logo.

The most important additions are the SIX ANSI art tutorials, because I didn't had any ANSI tutorials before and was constantly looking for some.

I found the tutorials in an unexpected place. They were originally published at the Acheron ANSI, ASCII and RIP art forums and portal at Acheron.org. Archeron was discontinued in 2004 and is now part of the Sixteencolors.net site, specificallly the Sixteencolors.net Wiki.

I found a backup of the whole site on the "Dark Domain DVD" by RaD Man/ACiD, which is actually an archive for ANSI/ASCII art packs and not a web archive per se. Well, thanks to Chris (RaD Man) and his collectors instinct, was I able to republish the ANSI art tutorials on the Internet again.

The Dark Domain DVD is available in my little "online shop" by the way and a must buy for all ANSI and ASCII art fans out there. Buy the DVD and stop collecting anything that was released before 2005, because the DVD has all of them in one small and handy package for an affordable price.

Now I need to find tutorials for 8-Bit block ASCII. I don't have anything for that style available at my academy yet.

I will continue looking for any tutorials, but play also with the idea of creating a tutorial myself, which covers some basics. I will have to see, if I find the time to do this or not. If you know about any 8-Bit ASCII tutorials, please let me know, I'd appreciate that.

Until then, check out the vast content that is already there, 7-Bit ASCII tutorials, now also ANSI tutorials, articles, background information, history and much more.
Visit the ASCII Art Academy now!

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

What is ANSI Animation or ANSImation?

People often confuse ASCII animation or ASCIImation with ANSI Animation or ANSImation and believe them to be the same. This is actually wrong.

ASCIImations are created by using programming (code) to move text characters around in a way that makes it apear like an animation or movement. Even text-mode demos that show text characters with ANSI color coding are not really ANSI animations, because they also use programming to make the characters move to get the desired movie or animation visual effects.

Back to ASCII Art Academy

True ANSI animations are not coded, don't use any programming language to create the effect of motion and only make use of some more specific and special escape sequences provided by the ANSI.sys driver of MS DOS. ANSI animations are not executables like text-mode demos, but plain and simple .ANS text files.

Smart Cursor Control
ANSI animation takes advantage of the build-in ESC sequences of the ANSI format to re-position the cursor on the screen to rewrite individual areas in a video-like sequence. ANSI.sys, the MS DOS driver that enabled the support for ANSI codes, also supported a number of other features that were helpful for the creation of ANSI animations.

Set cursor-position; move up/down/forward/backward for a set number of characters, save current cursor position, restore cursor position and erase line are the most important of those features. For a full description of the ANSI escape sequences supported by ANSI.sys, check out this text file.

Only few editors that supported ANSI animation are available. One of those editors is TheDraw, which is also my ANSI editor of choice for most ASCII and ANSI art pieces that I created. I use it since 1993 and still use it today once in a while. You can download the editor on my website and play around with its ANSI animation features, if you’d like to.

The "Speed Issue"
ANSI animations have one significant issue. The artist has no means to control the speed at which the animation is "played back". ANSI does not support fix time delays that are linked to the internal clock of the computer to wait for a set number of milliseconds, something most third generation programming languages support. The playback speed is entirely determined by how fast the system can read and display the ANSI escape sequences of the ANSI file. The speed if you load an ANSI from your hard disk by using the "type" command for example (with ANSI.sys driver loaded), is virtually instant. Even large ANSI files will be displayed within a fraction of a second.

In order to make the ANSI animation look like an animation is it necessary to throttle down the speed with which the ANSI codes and ASCII characters are loaded and then displayed on the screen.

The natural way to throttle down the loading speed of an ANSI at that time was the transfer speed of the modems of that era. The top speed of modems around the early 1990s was 9.6KBit to 14.4KBit. An 100KB ANSI animation would take a few seconds to download and just cause the necessary delays to bring the animation to life.

To show the effects of the longer loading time on an ANSI, caused by the slower download speed of a modem from that era, see this video. It shows a long ANSI downloaded with a simulated speed of a 14.4KB modem. It's not an animation and only a very long static ANSI, but it is perfect for the illustration of how ANSI animations were only made possible, because of the existance of the combination of available and needed ANSI.sys escape sequences for cursor movement and control plus the slow download speed of modems at that time to cause the necessary delays by which ANSI animations are being loaded and displayed.



The biggest takeaway from this simple fact is that creators of ANSI animations did not only have to consider which characters to re-write, overwrite and delete etc., but also for which download speed the animation will be optimized. If the animation was optimized for a download speed of 2,400 baud and downloaded with a 14.4KB modem, the animation would play much too fast. If the animation was optimized for 14.4KB and downloaded with a 2,400 Baud modem, the animation would appear like in slow motion.

ANSI Animation Artists Tracer/ACiD and Jed/ACiD
One artist who kind of specialized in this special area of ANSI art were the famous ACiD artists Tracer and Jed. They created a number of ANSI animations and were in my opinion the best ANSI animation artists who ever existed. They worked on some pieces together.

Tracer optimized most of his ANSI animations to be downloaded and watched by a user with a 14.4KB modem or at least 9.6KB for optimum playback speed.

Here is the video recording of one ANSI animation that was created for the BBS "The Bog" by Tracer/ACiD and Jed/ACiD in 1992.



Other ACiD artists who created ANSI animation were Tank, Fusion, Cerberus and Blade Runner. They created also some remarkable pieces of ANSI animation (they called it ANSI Movies back in the old days), but fell a bit short of the quality and ingenuity of the works by their group mates Tracer and Jed (IMHO).

Although ANSI was capable of some sounds, which caused the development of a small specialized scene, which created ANSI music, am I unaware of the existence of ANSI animations that also use ANSI music for sound effects and/or background music. I am also not aware of any editor that supported both of those features to help artists with the creation of such ANSI animations.

I dug up a number of old ANSI animation pieces (over a dozen of them) and currently work on converting them to video. Watch out for the ANSI Movies/ANSI Animation gallery here at RoySAC.com.

Update! Here are 21 ANSI Animations from various ACiD Production members. I did not embed the YouTube video for all of the 21 videos, because that would screw up some browsers. I added small thumbnail images with a direct link to the video at YouTube for each of the ANSI animations instead. Enjoy the show!

Tracer/ACiD ACiD Productions	Tracer/ACiD The Elders Craft World	Tracer/ACiD SDA
Tracer/ACiD Body Count	Jed and Tracer/ACiD The Bog	Tank/ACiD Agents of Fortune
Tank/ACiD Inn of the Last Home	Sonic/ACiD Why does iCE has so many members?	Sonic/ACiD Spyrits Crypt
Jed/ACiD Surburbia	Jed/ACiD So-Krates BBS	Jed/ACiD Midnite Oil 3
Jed/ACiD Beyond the Realm of Reality	Jed/ACiD Barter Town	Jed and Spectral Illusion/ACiD Nuclear Wastelandz
Jed and RaD Man/ACiD Street Spydrs	Fusion/ACiD Badlands	Cerberus/ACiD Evil Palace
Blade Runner/ACiD The Cartel	Blade Runner/ACiD Korova Milkbar	Jed/ACiD ANSI Toons 2

And here is another fun bonus. I provided one of the ANSI animations with a voiceover including foley FX and all that hehe. I hope you like it.



Backup link to video at YouTube.com.


Back to ASCII Art Academy

Cheers!
Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Stats for Fun

I have an account at the social network and artist community deviantArt.com since March 3, 2006.

I looked at the statistics today and find it pretty interesting. Some numbers are not shown in the summary so I added them myself.

Stats Summary

• roy-sac has 9,985 pageviews total and his 306 deviations were viewed 23,717 times. He watches 60 people, while 86 people watch him.
• Overall, his deviations received 665 comments and were added to deviants' favourites 198 times, while he commented 1,383 times, making about 2.06 comments per day since he joined DA. This means that he gave 21 comments for every 10 that he received.
• His deviation with the most comments is deviantART ANSI Logo with 98 comments, and it is also his most favourited, with 73 favourites. His most viewed deviation is deviantART ANSI Logo with 5,266 views.
• 3 favourites were given for every 10 comments.
• Every 2.1 days he uploads a new deviation, and it's usually on a Sunday, with 66 (22%) of his deviations.
• His busiest month was July 2006 with 61 (20%) of his deviations.
• The majority of his deviations are uploaded to the Digital Art gallery (268), while his favourite category was Text Art > ASCII with 134 deviations.

• Comments per deviation: 2.17
• Favourites per deviation: 0.64
• Views per deviation: 77.5
• Comments per day: 0.99
• Favourites per day: 0.29
• Views per day: 35.35
• Pageviews per day: 14.88

Additional figures that were not provided in the summary by deviantArt.

• Deviation Comments: 671
• Deviant Comments: 373
• News Comments: 31
• Forum Posts: 16
• Journal Entries: 48
• Favorites: 490
• Items in Wish List: 31
• Scraps: 7
• Prints available in dA Shop: 13 which had 17 sales altogether. Most of the sales were done by myself hehe.
• I submit art to 21 categories, but the vast majority of them (306) were for the categories ASCII Text Art (134), ANSI Text Art (109) and Landscapes (15). The last one is for photographies.

The top four deviations by number of favorites.

1. deviantART ANSI Logo (73 favs, 98 comments, 5266 views)
2. deviantART Google Logo (24 favs, 64 comments, 2663 views)
3. deviantART ASCII Logo (6 favs, 10 comments, 1126 views)
4. TRSI Pixel Art VGA Logo (6 favs, 10 comments, 184 views)

My first ANSI for Melmac BBS is actually #4 by pageviews. It had 610 of them, which is three times more than the TRSI logo. However, the Melmac ANSI was never fav'ed though hehe.

It Was Time Again For A Clean-Up

As the title of this post already said, it was time again for a clean-up of my site RoySAC.com. Its content was growing significantely over the past months, which resulted in a very user unfriendly navigation and gave folks a hard time to find stuff on the site.



Homepage
The first thing you will notice is a much more cleaner, shorter and straight forward homepage of RoySAC.com. Old content from the homepage was moved to existing pages (SAC homepage, About Me page), to its own page (Closed Society BBS) or simply deleted.

ASCII Art Academy
The ASCII art primer and the three styles of the underground text art scene articles can not be found in the top navigation anymore. I created a whole new section call the ASCII Art Academy. The academy refers to those two articles and to a lot more stuff, including the existing ASCII art tutorials by Solid and DiamonDie plus five new ASCII art tutorials and the History of ASCII Art article by Joan G. Stark.

The new ASCII Art Academy can also be reached via the simple URL RoySAC.com/learn/.

Art Galleries
I had already four art galleries for my own stuff. Three more were added when my site took over as Superior Art Creations homepage. Then I added two more with ASCII and ANSI art from other artists and don't forget the special ASCII Nudes gallery and the ASCII morph pieces by Skylined.

Stuff was all over the place.

The galleries got a new "splash page" called... right, Art Galleries, which provides easy access to all the galleries and art pieces mentioned above.

Contact Page
In the case that you did not notice, I also have a contact form available now where you can send me a message without the need to dig for my email address and using your email client.

Site Navigation
The top navigation and additional text navigation in the footer of the site reflect the new structure of my site. I hope it makes things less confusing and make people actually find all the nice stuff, which I made available on my website.

Unchanged
The SAC section grew in size a little, the same is true for my About Me page, but the rest remained pretty much the same as it was before. Also the online shop, downloads page and links section did not require to be changed.

Feedback Wanted
Let me know what you think. I am open for any comments, suggestions, praise, complaints and other feedback about the new site structure and navigation. Contact me directly or leave a comment here at my blog. Thanks, I appreciate that.

Enjoy the site! Cheers!
Carsten aja Roy/SAC

New ASCII and ANSI Art Galleries

When I added the SAC section to my site and new galleries with ASCII, ANSI and pixel art that were not created by me, did I say to myself "why not add other great art to the site as well".

Neo Tokyo ANSI by Somms/ACiD

I was also inspired by Sixteencolors.net who did an amazing job of making ANSI art available to look at on the web.

Razor 1911 ANSI by Zebig/Razor 1911

I don't want to create a file archive where you can find a lot of art, but have to download it first and use special software to be able to look at it. Jason Scott over at Textfiles.com is doing a great job doing that.


The new galleries are only the beginning. More will come over time.

Okay check out the new ASCII Art Gallery and the new ANSI Art Gallery.

ASCII Skull - taken from the
Night Rising World ASCII by Olli/Black Maiden

Famous Che Guevara head shot.
Taken from the MIM NFO ASCII by m0/Chemical Reactions

New Gallery Feature
You will notice in detail page of the ASCII art pieces new buttons in the top left: "Snapshot Image", "Text Version" and "Original (DL)".

Razor 1911 NFO file logo by JED/ACiD

"Snapshot Image" is the default display mode. The ASCIIs (and ANSIs) are converted with a tool called PHP AnsiLove to a PNG image. This happens in real time based on the original ASCII or ANSI file. The result is very close to the looks of the text art in MS DOS.

"Text Version" is what it says, the real text version of the ASCII. I wrote a converter to convert ASCIIs to Unicode. The font used is "Lucida Console" for the display on the web.

I am not sure if looks right on all systems and browsers, which is the reason that I did not make it the default display option.

I want to write a converter for ANSI as well, which converts the ANSI.sys "escape codes" to HTML. It is not done yet, thus no buttons are available in the details of the ANSIs yet.

Avatar FTP Site Advert by Darrix

"Original (DL)" was there all the time. It is also available at the bottom of the page for ANSIs. It is the option to download the original .ASC or .ANS file to your local hard drive.

I hope you will like those new additions to the site. Feel free to leave any comments and suggestions here at my blog.

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Welcome to the ASCII Art Videos

I added a new page to my site, which is dedicated to show videos that are about or related to text art and the subject that surrounds it, including the BBS scene, the demoscene and of course SAC, Superior Art Creations.

Visit the new ASCII Art Videos Section at RoySAC.com/videos/.

The section launched with 10 videos.

The first one is "The Art of Textmode" - Text Art History, a presentation at the Assembly 2004 Demo party in Helsinki, Finland by Christian Wirth aka RaD Man. I referred to that video earlier already in a blog post of mine from February and decided to put it somewhere on the site where it can be found more easily.

The second one is a short video by Creature of Hell/SAC - The Movie from 2001, showing off some of his pixel art skills.

The main part of the section is made up by the six videos, which represent the complete content of Jason Scott's 3 DVD long documentary titled "BBS - The Documentary". No, it's not an illegal copy of the DVD's. Jason put them up himself on Google Video, because he released the documentary under the creative commons licensing model to make its content easier accessible. Jason does of course appreciate support for his cause(s), which are surrounding the subject of BBS and actually were the triggers for him to create the documentary in the first place. You can support him via buying the real DVDs, pressed, not burned, with nice wrapping and paper box for example. You can get it via his website here or from Amazon.com, if you prefer them for any reasons.



Then I also put up two good examples of ASCIImation, which means animated ASCII or ASCII animation. The examples show two songs by more or less famous musicians who used ASCIImation for their music videos.

More videos will be added over time, especially videos of the old SACtros and cracktros the group did for others and which can not be started and watched on modern PCs without emulation of the old MS DOS operating system.

Btw. I extended the SAC section of RoySAC.com a little bit as well. I added more content and also found two music-disks that were released by SAC members when I was not part of the group anymore. I found them by accident and put them up on my site of course. :)

Cheers!
Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Major Site Expansion and New SAC Section with Art Packs Page

I spent quite some time to update content at my RoySAC.com Website. I wrote a whole ASCII art primer article to give you an idea what I am talking about in general. It is for people who do know little or nothing about ASCII/ANSI art, the artscene and the warez scene it operated in.

The biggest addition is the new SAC section, which is dedicated solely to everything related to Superior Art Creations, the art group, which I founded in 1994.

You can find there SAC VGA logos created by SAC members for the group, as well as ANSI logos and ASCII logos, which were created for internal purposes of the group.

The largest addition overall was the new SAC art packs releases page. It shows all 34 SAC art packs, which were released betweeen December 1994 and December 2005, the packs File_ID.diz, download links to the pack files, links to the SAC.NFO files for detailed information about each pack and a brief description for every release.

The descriptions are more detailed than I had originally planned. Because of that, does the page act as SAC history page for now, until a better SAC history page is being created one day. There are some "holes" in it, but I hope to get the missing information and will then update the page accordingly.

I updated pretty much every page of the site, including the home page, the Roy/SAC art page, the shop, the downloads section, the links page and the gallery pages (ASCII Art, ANSI Art, Best Of and VGA Art). The Website navigation was overhauled and has now a much slicker look than before. Here is a partial screen shot of how the navigation of the site looks today.



I hope you will enjoy the "renovated" and massive expanded RoySAC.com site. Let me know what you think about it, negative feedback is as welcome as possitive.

Thank you and Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Coming Up: DefCon, 15 Las Vegas

I will be at this years DefCon conference in Las Vegas, between August 3rd and 5th, 2007. DefCon is the world's largest underground hacking convention! This will be the 15th installment of the conference.

There will be over 175! Speakers and tons of sessions over multiple tracks.

My friend Christian Wirth aka "RaD Man", founder of ACiD Productions will be a speaker at the panel "Self-Publishing and the Computer Underground", together with Myles Long Director of Depravity, cDc communications/CULT OF THE DEAD COW and Rob "Flack" O'Hara member cDc's Ninja Strike Force.

Have you ever considered publishing your own book? Your own DVD? Self-publishing has been a part of the computer underground since its inception, from the Neon Knights to the Syndicate of London's recent book "End of Dayz". This panel will discuss types of self-publishing (both on- and off-line) and their relevance to the computer underground. They will also discuss their personal experiences in self-publishing. Ample time for questions will be available. Learn about the process from people who have gone through it.

Jason Scott from Textfiles.com and "BBS - The Documentary", who is a DefCon veteran, will be speaking at DefCon again too. This years session is titled "THE EDGE OF FOREVER - MAKING COMPUTER HISTORY"

Too often, "Computer History" gets shoved into a forgotten bin of irrelevancy, devoid of use for lessons and understanding. Even more often, people often fail to realize they're making history themselves. Jason Scott will walk though the basics of computer history, what to save, how to ensure things last for future generations, or perhaps how to ensure it's never found again.

I hope that I will be able to meet Jason in person. I read his blog titled "ASCII" and he seems to be a nice but also crazy guy (just like me hehe).

I got a free press pass for the conference, allthough the fee for a pass is cheap compared to other conferences, which I ususally attend. It's only $100. The hotel and flight are more expensive.

The event happens at the Riviera Hotel and Casino. The rooms are booked out. I am staying at the nearby but cheap Circus Circus, Resort and Casino.

There will be a sale of a limited editon DefCon T-shirt. I am telling you this, because I created the design for it :). It was my first ANSI in over 10 months.



Do you like it?

See ya in Las Vegas! Cheers! Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Nude Girls in ASCII - Even More Naked Truth

I realized 2 days after my post about the 30 years of naked ASCII art that the gallery was not working with Firefox and Safari.

No wonder that it died at Digg before it even started. I would be glad, if you could revive it by digging it, if you happen to have a Digg account. Thanks. Much appreciated.

I fixed the Gallery and tested it with Firefox 2.0 and Safari for Windows. It works fine now. While I was at it, did I extend the gallery from 20 to 30 pieces of art.

I also did significantly improve the interface. I am now showing little thumbnails for the picture selection and also added a little "fading" effect if you hover over a picture, which works for IE and Firefox (not for Safari, sorry).

       d@$iWWb:
     '8$$$$#$$$k
     '8$$$$ `$$M&
     X$$$$K  `$$XX
     $$$$$UUo$@$$$.
    9$$$$$$$$$9$$$$>
   W$$$$$$$$P `#$$?B
  '$$$$$"#$h. d$$$X?$c
   $$$$R      /"$$$X$$
   ?$$$R~    :/ $$R"""\.
    $$$$:  .xHH9$E      !
   '$"9$$N    d$$F       !
   '  M$$$'Ne@$$$!'      '
   E  XR#$>'R P9?  k>     :
   E   '! *f  .f'  :      9k               -~`      `"-.
   `  :    `    >   >     ~$:          .~                `!.
   'L :     ~` ~    !     '$8       .~                        ~\.
    ?         ~   ! .      $$$.    :                             `~:
    `!        '   %X2      R$$W% .~                                  `\
     !:  MM>  FL     :     M5$$ ~   !                                   `.
     !$W.   xF  #buo@$     '^$F   :$$>       .--^`"-.  `.
     !M$$$$*         'k    '     d$*##..-~`           `: "4:x.       `"#5    \.
     '!$$$$$c   !. !xx!     .!  `$$@F`                  >~
     '\!?$$$$$X.     `M   9 !     ~
     '!!!> ~ `!!~!!.  f     ~ ~

A simple click on the current image also closes it and pushes the image selection up and into the center of the screen. So you don't have to scroll all the way to the end of the picture anymore. I also reduced the size of the standard website navigation to the minimum.

A lot of enhancements and extensions. A lot more reasons to check out my ASCII Nudes Collection.



This is a screen shot of the new image selection. Neat eh?
Enjoy!


Cheers!
Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Text Art Google Group

I created today a Google Group titled "ASCII and ANSI Text Art", but it is open to anything and anybody who and which is related to Text Art.

For that reason is the short name and URL to the group "textart" instead of "asciiart" or "ansiart".

ASCII and ANSI text art Visit this group

Subscribe to ASCII and ANSI text art Email: Visit this group

Those templates were provided by Google hehe.

I created already a little resources page and also started a discussion about something that has always been a controversy. I will not tell you what that is, go check out the group and find out for yourself.

A number of XML feeds are also available for anybody who can not live without.

	Atom 1.0 15 New messages 50 New messages 15 New topics 50 New topics		RSS 2.0 15 New messages 50 New messages 15 New topics 50 New topics

Lets see how it goes. Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Image to Text Converter and Fun with Matt Cutts

I came across a nice free tool that converts images to ASCII. It is called Photo2Text.com and produces very decent results. I have looked at a bunch of such converters since the early nineties and the results can vary a lot, depending on the quality of the algorithm that has to decide which text character is the best to get it as close to the original as it possibly can.

I was never a fan on image to text converters. Mostly because those converters were and are often used by guys who are cheats and try to "sell" converted images as their own creation, as in made from scratch and by hand. Real pieces of ASCII art are being created without the use of any special tools other than editors that allow to assign text characters to specific keys on the keyboard and let you easier move around to change individual characters ("insert" off and the ability to move with the cursor to the right without the need to create "spaces" manually first). A number of different tools are available for download at my site.

Anyhow, I take the converters as what they are, a nice tool to have fun with, nothing serious. Nothing is wrong with good old fashioned fun. The only person who is serious about it, is the coder who spent his time figuring out how to produce the best possible result.

To demonstrate the quality of the Photo2Text.com converter, did I use an image of the Google engineer Matt Cutts, who has a blog where he talks to webmasters about SEO and search engine spam (and his pet, a cat). I had my arguments with him a bunch of times, so it just right for me to use him as guinea pig and demonstration object hehe.

You can see the GIF image of him, which I used to the right. I optimized it a bit to increase the contrast for better result. I also made sure that there is not too much going on, like stuff in the background, which would overload the picture and harder to get an ASCII back where you can identify anything.

The tool lets you choose from eight different character sets to be used for the converted image.

Set 1:  @#MBHA&Gh93X25Sisr;:,.
Set 2:  @#MBHA&Gh93X25Sisr;:,.__
Set 3:  #WMBRXVYIti+=;:,.
Set 4:  #Xx+=-;,.
Set 5:  @%#*+=-:.
Set 6:  #¥®Ø$ø0o°+=-,.
Set 7:  01
Set 8:  █▓▒░

An interesting and rare feature is the "slider" to adjust the image's "brightness". It is more than just a gimick and you should play around with it, because it can improve results significantly if you increase or decrease it, depending on the original image.

Also nice, the option to save the final ASCII to your computer. Okay, lets have a look at the results for the Matt Cutts image.

First Version using Character Set: @#MBHA&Gh93X25Sisr;:,.

I used the default "brightness", which is a bit darker. For that reason is the face also filled with characters.

                                ..,ri52G@@HXX2i;::;:                                    
                            rAr;@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@#i,                               
                       ,iH@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@Mr                            
                    .r@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@s.                        
                 .i#@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@;                      
               ,h@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@r                    
             .s@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@r                  
            .2@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@2                
            X@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@,              
          :#@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@S             
        :#@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@X            
       3@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@r           
      s@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@H           
      &@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@;          
      H@@@@@HG#@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@A          
      A@@@@G2i9@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@#@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@.         
      ,@@@Gi552#@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@;         
       s@Bri22SG@@@M#@@@#@@@@@@@#@##@@@@@@##MM##@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@s         
       s@5iXX2S5h#@@@@@@#@@@@@@@####@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@#@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@3         
       i@S39X55ss5G#@###@@GH@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@H         
       r@299X2Siiir;r;;;sii;,:iXA@@@@@@@@@@#952A@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@M         
       ;#299XX2225issrrr;::;;,   ;h2;rrs2Xisrr2A##@@@@M@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@2         
       ,Ah3XXXX52225isiSiiiiSisr:,,,,:::::rsiSih##M@@@#@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@r         
       .3AXXXXX25522iiSiSissrsSs;::;;rsrrsii22i3@@#@@@#@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@G          
        5G522XX2iSX5i55iis;;;;rr;;rsss55sSXSiS22H@@#@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@s          
       :hX2SsiSisi52Sii5rr;;;r;;rrSi55555Siiii52&#@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@H,          
      .GMA3Siisiiii5Siisrr;;;rrrrrsi52552SSSSS522B@@M#@@@###@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@#,          
     ;@@@#XSS5iisriisr;ssrsrrsssrrri2252X5555SSSrX@@###@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@h           
 ;r;X@@@@@@M#BG5iirsirrs2iSSsisr;:rsiS55225SSiiSssS&@@@##@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@r           
.@@#; ,A@@@@@@@H9&32&h3XX2S5SSXh3irssi52XX5S25522SiSG@@@@@@#@@@@@@M2ssSXA@@M,           
  H;   ;#@@@A#@@@#95G@@@@@@@@#@@##AAAhh2SXX22iSSSX3X&@@@@@@@@@A2Sr:;sisS5h@5            
  s;.  ,hH@#hXA@@@#&9G9&B@@@@@@@@@@@#M##AX3hX3hHHM#M#@@@@@@@@9:.:sSSi52Ss2Bs            
   s:  iA3G&B#@@@3S5A#5ri2SA@@@@@M##@@#@@@@#HAGX222S5B@@@@#@@5;i2; :r2G5s2@A            
   ;2,,3AGG&AG9@ASs;sH@@&2X&###A322H@h3AAXr;;;;rsiSSi2M##@#@M33BArsXSSG3rh@B            
    ,ihAHAh&h223XisisS23922hBBAh32i23r;s;;;;;::rS52X22H@@@@@AhHMGr;XXiGXs@@             
     ;#AXX2X29GXisSirri22ssS2XXX2S53irrsiisrr;rS2523X2XBHA##hiX3; :iSi2i#@;             
     rA2522553X5i5X2isrri22555XhhX5SrsissiissiS222XXXX22X9AHhsS2:;S5S2rA@i              
     SM22252XAh22X33X25irrsiSiiiisr;;rrrrriiS25XXXX3hXXhGAHB&2hAXA3S2rX@r               
     5B225S2GX2i55XG&A&9SiiSisrrrrssssrrsiiS22X33XXXXX9h&AMMA3i;;SA3s9@3                
     2M2X5S2XS;;iS5XXXhhX22XXisiiiiiiiiSSSS52222XX22XXX3AAH#H9i;;riiH@h                 
     SBXX2Xh35SXX225SiXAG22X25Siiii55522Sii5S52223XX93X9G&B#Xr2352iX@2                  
     r#BA&M@@#HAA&M#AAH&2sS2Siiiiii222222Sii5SS529G9399&hHM#3;;S39#@A                   
     .3#M#@@@@@M@@@@@HXiiiisiissrii5255552SS2X293hh2XGA&ABMB@#&A#@@h                    
      :@#H###@MM@###HAAXX25SSSisriis5555SS522X3hh&hhGGAAABMM@@HB@#:                     
      :##&HAG9#@@Ah9GAA&&G&hG&3XSiiiiS5225523X9h93XXG&AAAB###BGA@h                      
      ,A@#MHAX522is2&AB#BGHHGAG22sssS5S522233999X393GA&BMHH##H&H@M                      
       rBHH#@@@#MA9939ABBMMBAAA9XSssi5SSS523X3h99GG&AAAHBHB#MBHH@@                      
       ,@B9hA&HM@@@@#&&AHHH##&A#AiiSiii525239hh99&AAAHHHHMMMBBB#@@                      
       :@@MA9Xi2AHG3XX3G&5rSG&G&92isiS522Xh9339hG&AABHAAHMMMHHM#@@                      
       ,@@@M##AAA&&&&HAhisiii3HA9X52222XXX9&hhG3&HAHAAHABBHBHAM#@@                      
        r@@#M@@@@@@#BA33XXGh9&B@#9hG923h933399&AAAABHAHHBBMHBBB#@@                      
         r@@AGH####BA3X52ABMBAM@#AA9GGhG93XXhh9AAGAHAA#MBMMAB##@@@                      
          H@#HG9G32X3X5SS9BABMB###GhhGh223X3hhGG&AHAHHBBBHAAM##@@#                      
          ;#@@A9&AA&h39hhhBBAHHHM#Ah333XX9X99AAAAAAHHHAHHAHHM##@@#                      
           B@@#A&B#H9XAHBGABHAAH#B&3XXhGhh99&AAAAAHBHAAA&&HHM#BB@&                      
           ,#@@@BB#HhAA#@BHBM@@@@@AXhGh&AAA&AHAAABHAHAA&&ABHBMMh2G:                     
             X@@@@@@@###@@@@@@@@@#&XGGGG&HHAAAAAAAA&AGGGG&AAHBAXsSs.                    
               sB@@@@@@@@@@@@#B&X2XG&&AGGHHABB&AAA&&G3GAG3ABA&XS5s;                     
                 :BH#@@#BAGX2SSX3XG&AAGAA&AAAAG&&&9hGXX99G&BMAXSs;.                     
                  .5S2GM##MAhAHAAAHHHAAHA&AA&GAAhh9X3993XG9&BG2i;.                      
                  .9Xr;ri&#@@@@BB#MMHA&&AAGG&AAh39hXX3X333GAG2r;.                       
                  :hh3ir;;ri&#@@@#BAHAGAAAA&hhh9XX222XX9h9Ahs,.                         
                  ;XXA35srr;rrS9ABMHBAG&&h332S2X25X22XX9h&9S,                           
                  ,si239X5ir;rsii5239X2X2SSS55iSSSS2X39GG3X;.                           
                     :i2XX5irrrsiisiSiiiiiii55555Si23992sr:,                            
                      :sri55isrrssiiiiSSiS522222i53225ir:                               
                       .;r;rSSisrrsiiiiSSS5255225S2Sssr;.                               
                         ,;;rsiSsrrrsssssssiisiSSsrsis,                                 
                           .,:;sssssrssrsssssrssssir,.

Now a different version using the

Block ASCII Character Set: █▓▒░

I also increased the "brightness" so that the face does not require as much characters. It makes it look much cleaner IMO.

                                   ░░                                              
                                ▒████████████████████▓                                  
                          ▒███████████████████████████████                              
                      ░██████████████████████████████████████░                          
                    ████████████████████████████████████████████░                       
                 █████████████████████████████████████████████████▓                     
               ▓████████████████████████████████████████████████████▓                   
              ▓███████████████████████████████████████████████████████▓                 
             ███████████████████████████████████████████████████████████▒               
            ██████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████              
          ███████████████████████████████████████████████▓█████████████████             
        ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████            
       █████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████▓███████            
       ██████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████           
       █████▒░▓██████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████           
       ████▒  ░█████████████████████████▓█████████████████████████▓██████████▓          
       ▓██░    ▓██████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████          
        █▒  ░  ▒███▓▓███▓███████▓▓▓▓██████▓▓▓▓▓▓██████████████████████████████          
        █  ░░   ░▓██████▓▓█████▓▓▓▓▓▓▓███████████████▓▓████████████████▓██████          
        █ ░░░     ▒▓█▓▓▓██░▒▓█████████████████████████████████████████████████░         
        ▓ ░░░░                 ░▒█████████▓▓░  ▒▓█████████████████████████████░         
        ▒ ░░░░░                   ░      ░     ▒▓▓█▓██▓███████████████████████          
        ░░░░░░░                                ░▓▓▓███▓▓██████████████████████          
         ▒░░░░░░  ░                            ░▓█▓███▓██████████████████████░          
         ░ ░ ░░   ░                       ░     ▒██▓█████████████████████████           
                                               ░▒▓██████████████████████████▒           
        ▒▒░                                      ▓██▓▓▓██▓▓▓████████████████▒           
      ▒██▓░                            ░░        ░██▓▓▓▓████████████████████            
     ▒█████▓▓▒░                         ░          ▒███▓▓██████████████████▓            
 ░█░   ░███████▒░▒░ ░░░        ░        ░░     ░░   ▒▓█████▓██████▓    ░▒██▒            
        ▓███▒▓▓██▓░ ░▓███████▓▓█▓▓▒▒▒░░░ ░░      ░░░▒█████████▒          ░▓             
        ░▒█▓░░▒███▓▒░░░▒▓██████████▓▓▓▓▓▒░░░░░░▒▒▓▓▓▓████████░            ▒             
        ▒░░▒▓▓███░  ▒▓     ▒█████▓▓▓██▓████▓▒▒░░     ▓████▓██         ▒   ▓             
        ▒░░▒▒░░▓▒    ▒██▒ ░▒▓▓▓▒░ ░▒█░░▒▒░            ▓▓▓█▓█▓░░▒▒     ▒░ ░█░            
       ▒▒▒░▒░ ░░░     ░░░  ░▒▓▒░░   ░              ░  ▒█████▒░▒▓░     ▒░ █▓             
      ▒░░░ ░ ░░░             ░░░░  ░               ░░ ░▒▒▒▓▓░ ░░        ▓█              
      ░      ░░   ░           ░░░░                ░░░░░ ░░▒▒░          ▒█               
      ▒     ░▒░  ░░░░                          ░░░░░░░░░░▒▒▒▒ ░░ ░░   ░█                
      ▒ ░  ░░░    ░▒▒▒▒░                      ░░░░░░░░░░▒▒▓▓▒░    ▒░ ░█                 
      ▒ ░   ░      ░░░░░░  ░░                 ░ ░░  ░░░░▒▒▒▓▒░      ▒█░                 
      ▒░░ ░░░  ░░░░   ░▒░░ ░░                   ░░░░░░░░▒▒▓▓░  ░   ░█                   
      ▒▒▒▒▓██▓▒▒▒▒▓▓▒▒▒▒                        ░░░░░░░▒░▒▓▓░   ░░▓█░                   
       ▓▓▓█████▓█████▒░                      ░ ░░░░░░▒▒▒▒▒▓▓▓▓░▒▓██░                    
       ▓▓▒▓▓▓█▓▓█▓▓▓▒▒▒░░                    ░░░░▒░░▒░▒▒▒▒▓▓█▓▒▓█▓                      
       ▒▓▒▒▒░░▓██▒░░░▒▒▒▒░▒░░▒░             ░░░░░░░░▒▒▒▒▒▒▓▓▓▓░▒█░                      
       ░▓▓▓▒▒░ ░    ▒▒▓▓▒░▒▒▒▒░         ░ ░░░░░░░░░░░▒▒▒▓▒▒▓▓▒▒▒█▒                      
        ▒▒▒▓███▓▓▒░░░░▒▒▒▓▓▒▒▒▒░          ░░░░░░░▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▓▓▓▒▒▒█▒                      
        ▓▒░░▒▒▒▓████▓▒▒▒▒▒▒▓▓▒▒▓▒         ░░░░░░░▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▓▓▓▓▒▒▓█▒                      
        ██▓▒░░ ░▒▒▒░░░░▒▒   ▒▒░▒░        ░░░░░░░░▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▓▓▓▒▒▓▓█▒                      
        ▒██▓▓▓▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒░     ░▒▒░░    ░░░░░▒░░░░▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▓▒▒▒▒▒▓▓█▒                      
         ▓█▓▓███▓██▓▒▒░░░░▒░░▒▓█▓░░░░░░░░░░░░░▒▒▒▒▒▓▒▒▒▒▒▓▓▒▓▒▒▓█▓                      
          ▓█▒░▒▓▓▓▓▓▒░░ ░▒▓▓▓▒▓█▓▒▒░▒▒░░░░░░░░░▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▓▓▒▓▓▒▒▓▓██▒                      
          ░█▓▒▒░░░░░░░   ░▓▒▒▓▒▓▓▓▒░░░░░ ░░░░░░▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▓▓▒▒▒▒▓▓▓██▒                      
           ▒█▓▒░▒▒▒▒░░░░░░▓▒▒▒▒▒▓▓▒░░░░░░░░░░▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▓▓▓██▒                      
           ░██▓▒▒▓▓▒░░▒▒▓░▒▒▒▒▒▒▓▒▒░░░░░░░░░▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▓▓▓▓▓                       
            ▒██▓▓▒▓▒░▒▒▓█▓▒▓▓█████▒░░▒░▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▓▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▓▒▒▓▓░                        
              ▓██████▓▓▓█████████▓▒░░░░▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒░▒▒▒▒▒▒░                        
                ▒████████████▓▓▒░ ░░▒▒▒▒░▒▒▒▓▒▒▒▒▒▒▒░░▒▒▒░▒▓▒▒░                         
                  ▒▒▓██▓▓▒▒░░  ░░░░▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒░░▒░░░░▒▒▒▓▒░                         
                     ░▒▓▓▓▓▒░▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒░░░░░░░░░▒░▒▒░                          
                         ▒▓████▓▓▓▓▓▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒░░░░░░░░░░░▒▒░                           
                    ░░      ▒▓███▓▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒░░░░░░░  ░░░░░▒░                            
                     ▒░        ░▒▓▓▒▓▒░▒▒░░░   ░  ░  ░░░░▒░                             
                      ░░░         ░░░░ ░            ░░░░▒░                              
                                                    ░░░                                 
                                           ░ ░░   ░░

The 3rd version of the ASCII uses the Character Set: #WMBRXVYIti+=;:,.
I continued to use the higher brightness to make the look of the ASCII more clean and sharp.

I also inverted the colors to have white characters on black background, which is closer to the look and feel of MS DOS. MS DOS used a gray font on black background, but I did not try to make it authentic. I was more going after the looks of it.

                               +###################WI                                  
                          ;B#############################B                              
                       #####################################R                           
                    ############################################                        
                 X################################################V                     
               t####################################################I                   
              Y###################W######################M############V                 
             ####################################WW###########WW########:               
            ######################################################W#######              
          ############################W##################BWWMW#######M#####             
        #############################WW########W#########WW#################            
       ######W########################W#############################MW######            
       ######W#############################W################################M           
       ####Wt;X#####################W##################W##########W##########           
       ###W;  ,#####################W##WBM############WW##########B##########t          
       X##;    X###WW#############M#####################W###W################B          
        #I     ;W#MVR##WR######MRBRRMWW##WBRVVXBMWWW####WM############W######B          
        #       :X##M###XB####BBRRRRBBM#######WMWWMMMBBWM####WM#######MBM#####          
        # .:      ;VBRXR#M;tR#################W#######WW#WW#####W######W######          
        V ,:                    ;B########BX:  +B#MM##W#######################.         
        + ,:.                     .            iRRMBMMV#########W#############          
         .. .                                  :BVVWWWXB#####################M          
         ;                                     .B#BM##B##MW###WMW########WM##           
         ,                                      t#WXW###########W#########M##           
                                                =RMMWW#W###W############MW##=           
        ++.                                      Y#MYRBW#BRRM###########WW##+           
      +##V                                        W#RRXBW###WWMW############            
     =####WIVt,                                    =BW#RR####WW######MW####X            
  #    ,#######+ :  .                               ;B#####BM#####Y     +M#+            
        YM##+RBMWV. ,R######WVXBYI::;,,           ..=M#######Mi          :R             
         iWX:.+W##X;,:,;I#########WRYYRR+ .,  ,itYXVB#####M##,            i             
        ;.;=YRM#W,  =R     +####BYXRMBX###WV+=,      Y####R#M         :   V             
        =;;=i;:Bi    t##=  =VRXi.  IM: ==             VBBWBMY. i;     :. ,#             
       :++:=;  .       .,  :IIi:.   .                 t#####+,iI      :  WX             
      ;:   . :;                    .               ..  ItiRR;           X#              
      .      ,.                ::                  ..   .:+t:          =#               
      =     .+:                                    ,:  :;iII= ., .     #                
      ;     ;.     :;=;                           .   ::=iYVi.    :   #                 
      =               :,                              .,+iIXi.      +#                  
      ;    :.          +:                        ,..:. ,;+YB        #                   
      =i==Y##V+=+=YRi+t;                         ,;:.::=:tYX     .X#,                   
       IIR####WYM#W#Wt.                        ,.:: .=+=iIVIRY:;Y##                     
       VVtXXXMVVMXVRti+                       .::=;:=;i+iIVYMRiIMV                      
       iV=ti;:X#Mi:,;ii;;:;.,,                ,::, .;=++iIXVRY;iM                       
        XXVt+.      =+IRI:ii:;,            ..,,,.,:,;i=IVtIXXt=t#;                      
        +itRMWWRYi:,.,+IIYYI+++.           . .:,:;;=+i+IIIYXVItI#i                      
        Yt,:i=tV####V==iIttRV=iV;          .,::::=i+iIItIVVYYIIV#+                      
        R#Yi:.  it;. ..;+   ;=;;.         :,.,::;=+iIIt+tVVYtIVR#=                      
        i##YVX++i====t+:     .t+,         ,=;:;,+tiItiI+IIIItiYR#i                      
         Y#RYM#WBWWXI+,.  ;:,=YBV.,,  .,,,.,,,=+i+iIt+ttIYYtYIIR#V                      
          R#+;IXXRRY+,   iIYI+V#R+=,;;:;:.. ;:,i+=+t+iXYIVViIVXW#i                      
          ,WVt=:;. .,    ,IiIYIRXX;::;;  . ,::;==itittIYItiiVXRW#;                      
           t#Bi:+i++:.::::YIiIttVXi;,., .,.::+++++itttittitIVVVM#;                      
           .##Vi=IXt:.+tY;+Iti+tRI=...:;;:::=++++iIItiii+=tIYVYIX                       
            =##BYIXt;+iXMItYVMMM#M+.:=:=++i=+t+iiIIiti+==iYtIYY:                        
              YW####MBVBW########B=.;;;;=tti+iii+i+=+==;;=titIt                         
                ;############RY=   ;=+i=;ttiYI=+++==;,;+=.+Ii=.                         
                  ;+X##RY+;.    , ;=+i;+i++ti+====,;; .::=+IV+                          
                      ;VRXY+;+ti+itttiiti=+t+;++:;:.,::,.=:=I;                          
                         =XW##MYYRVYt++=++=;=i+:.::  ,.,.,;+;                           
                    .       ;RMW#RIit+=++++=:::,.     .:::+:                            
                     =         ,+YYIY+;==:..           ::;,                             
                                   .,                ,:;;                               
                                                    .,,

Last but not least the "Geek Version" using only 0 and 1. Well, Matt Cutts is an engineer and geek and probably loving this version the most hehe.

                               1000000000000000000001                                  
                          10000000000000000000000000000000                              
                       00000000000000000000000000000000000000                           
                    00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000                        
                 00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001                     
               100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001                   
              100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001                 
             000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001               
            00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000              
          00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000             
        00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000            
       000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000            
       0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000           
       0000011100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000           
       00001   000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001          
       1001    100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000          
        01     100010000000000000000000000001110000000000000000000000000000000          
        0       11000000100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000          
        0         110010001100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000          
        1                       100000000001   1000000000000000000000000000000          
        1                                      1000000100000000000000000000000          
                                                011000100000000000000000000000          
         1                                      00000000000000000000000000000           
                                                10010000000000000000000000000           
                                                10000000000000000000000000001           
        11                                       1001000000000000000000000001           
      1001                                        00001000000000000000000000            
     100000111                                     1000000000000000000000001            
  0     00000001 1                                  100000000000001     1001            
        1000100001   0000000010011111               10000000001          10             
         101  100001 1 110000000000011001      11101000000000             1             
        1 1110000   10     1000001100000000111       10000000         1   1             
        111111 01    1001  11011   101 11             1000001  11     1   0             
       111 11               1111                      1000001 11      1  01             
      11      1                                        111001           00              
                                                          111          10               
      1      1                                         111111          0                
      1     1      1111                                111111     1   0                 
      1                                                 11111       10                  
      1                1                                1110        0                   
      111110011111101111                          1    1 111      10                    
       110000001000001                               11111110111100                     
       1111110110110111                          11111111111001101                      
       111111 1001  11111 1                         1111110101110                       
        11111       1110111111                      11111111111101                      
        1110000011    111111111                  11111111111111101                      
        11 1111100001111111011111                11111111111111101                      
        0011    111    11   1111                111111111111111001                      
        100111111111111       11           11 1 111111111111111001                      
         1001000000111    11 1101             11111111111111111001                      
          00111111011    1111110011 1111    11 1111111111111111001                      
           0111 1         1111101111 11     1111111111111111110001                      
           1001 1111   11 1111111111         111111111111111111001                      
            00111111  1111111111011    111  111111111111111111111                       
            10001111111001111000001  1 1111111111111111111111111                        
              100000001000000000001 111111111111111111111111111                         
                1000000000000011   111111111111111111 111 1111                          
                  111000111       1111111111111111 11    11111                          
                      1101111111111111111111111111       1 111                          
                         1100001101111111111111           111                           
                            1000001111111111  1           1                             
                     1          111111111                1                              
                                                       11                               

Pretty cool, eh? Go check out Photo2Text.com yourself and have fun with it.

It's fun. I actually had that much fun, that I am thinking of creating a little gallery with people in the search engine marketing space in ASCII format. Maybe even people from the affiliate marketing industry. This would maybe bring some people closer to the subject of text art and make them realize that you can do amazing things with something as simple as plain text.

Too bad that the converter does not support ANSI, to create colored version of an image. Maybe they develop a version in the future that supports that.

The history of text art dates back hundreds, if not even thousands of years and were not an invention that came with the computer as many people tend to believe. The first "modern" text art was created on typewriters, which are around for well over 100 years.

I also blogged in the past about things like ASCII animations, called ASCIImation. The music video example that was made up entirely of text was cool too.

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Search for ANSI and ASCII Artists and Bloggers

Except for some activities at deviantART was I not successful after over one year of searching to find much (if any) other blogs that are related to the old ANSI and ASCII underground artscene.

Fellow artists who created ASCII art for group NFO files, File_ID.diz or ANSI art for BBS Layouts and Login pictures and logos back in the early to mid 1990's.

It's sad and frustrating. The lack of community makes me spin off with my blog into other subjects, such as deviantART, Wikipedia and Cirque Du Soleil (or Internet Marketing and in a few cases about video games). I also was writing about internet video and music. Nice stuff, but not text art related.

I recenty created a new "Demoscene and Text Art Community" over at BUMPzee!

BUMPzee! is a blogger community / feed reader / networking site with some Digg features. I added another blog to the community, which I found at Blogspot, but that blog does not see much activity anymore either.



Where are you guys (and few girls) of the text art scene, demo scene and BBS warez scene? Nobody blogging? Nobody writing about things that were forgotten by most people and never learned by todays youth? Come on over and contact me and join the community.

Cheers!
Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Beck ASCIImation and a Walking Man 7-Bit ASCII

I came across two cool examples of ascii art made entirely out of 7-bit US-ASCII characters only, using only letters, number etc.

As a refresher, here is the complete US-ASCII character set.

US Charsset - ascii 32 (space) to 126 (tilde ~)
 
    ! " # $ % & ' ( ) * + , - . /
  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 : ; < = > ?
  @ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O         
  P Q R S T U V W X Y Z [ \ ] ^ _
  ` a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o
  p q r s t u v w x y z { | } ~  
 

The first one is a picture of a walking man.

The ASCII is pretty small (see full size picture below), but if you size it down to a degree where you can't see the actual letter anymore (see image to the right), you will notice how detailed the picture actually is. A true piece of art.




<------ ROCKS!
<--------- YEAH!
<------------- BABY!

<----- 100% PURE US-ASCII




The second cool piece of ASCII art I came across is a music video by Beck for one of his songs called "Black Tambourine".

I am not a big Beck fan and did not know about the existance of the video until recently. The whole video is in ASCII. A true ASCIImation. Awesome! Check it out!



Backup Link to Video at YouTube.

That's it. I just wanted to let you know about my discoveries.

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

Keyboard Text Art From Over Twenty Years Before ASCII

The Modern Merchanix Blog published in March, April and July 2006 three remarkable examples of nineteen thritees and fourties typewriter art, also known as keyboard art.

Back to ASCII Art Academy

The artwork was found in various preserved issues of the magazine "Popular Science" from 1939 and 1948. The Popular Science Magazine is still publishing today. They also have a website with a lot of (current ;)) content online. Visit the Popular Science Magazine Website.

The art was created by the artists on classic mechanical typewriter machines. "Personal" Computers did not exist at that time yet, the term computer was not coined yet either and the ASCII standard was still 20-30 years away in the future.

The following example is from 1939. One year earlier in 1938 did Germany’s Konrad Zuse finish the Z1, one of the first binary digital computers and a machine that could be controlled through a punch tape. The project started in 1936 and the Z1 is considered by many the "first computer" and Konrad Zuse the "Inventor of the modern Computer".

Source: Popular Science Magazine,
Issue: 6-1939

Typewriter Artist Produces Pictures Like Tapestry
by Rosaire J. Belanger


Pictures that resemble tapestry are produced with a typewriter by Rosaire J. Belanger, a mill worker in Saco, Me. Belanger first draws a pencil sketch on a sheet of paper, then inserts it in his typewriter and fills in the sketch with various characters to produce shading and outlines. With carbon paper, he transfers the picture onto graph paper, and copies it on blank paper.

Picture Description
George Washington, as pictured with a type-writer by Rosaire J. Belanger. At the left, the artist at the keyboard.




The following two examples are from 1948.
1948 is the same year when IBM built the SSEC (Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator). The IBM computer behemoth contained 12,000 tubes.


Source: Popular Science Magazine,
Issue: 7-1948

Typewritten Flag
by Menno Fast


Anyone can draw an accurate picture of the American flag on a typewriter, according to Menno Fast, a relief worker in Poland.

Fast read a recent Popular Mechanics article on drawing pictures with a typewriter.

He submits a drawing of the flag as proof that it can be made on an ordinary typewriter using standard spacing.

The flag, with a full 13 stripes and 48 stars, appears to be rippling in the wind.





Source: Popular Science Magazine,
Issue: 10-1948

KEYBOARD ART
By Paul Hadley


WHILE purely entertaining, doodling with a typewriter gives vent to the imagination and originality of both the experienced and the hunt-and-peck typist.

Fill-in pictures are the easiest to “draw” with a typewriter. An example is shown in the flower which is made with the letter X alone.

Such pictures, whether a flower or a portrait, are made by using an outline of the subject as a typing guide.

This is done by tracing the outline lightly on paper and backing it with carbon paper to type the picture.

Caricature or cartoon “drawing” combines letters with symbols as shown in the examples below.

Here, half-spacing of the typewriter is required, as in the case of the owl’s beak and feet.

The log cabin shows what can be done in drawing a picture in perspective.

Resources to Computer History

• The History of Computers - A Computer History Timeline at About.com.


• COMPUTER HISTORY - History from B.C. to today by Computer Hope.

Resources to Text Art History

• The History of ASCII (Text) Art by Joan G. Stark


• ASCII art at Wikipedia Encyclopedia


• 100 YEARS OF THE COMPUTER ART SCENE - Transcript (text), presented by Jason Scott and RaD Man (ACiD), Notacon Conference - Cleveland, Ohio, USA, April 23-25th, 2004

I hope you enjoyed the little trip back in time.

Back to ASCII Art Academy

Cheers!
Carsten aka Roy/SAC