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THE.ASCII.ART.EMPORIUM

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JavE has a feature for camelized ASCII.
2.5 Others
There are variations of the previously listed styles, such as combination of
solid and lineart (my favorite type of ASCII), "solid lineart" (made out of
heavy outlines in solid style) and tiny ASCII, such as smileys and other very
small pictures. ASCII animations are made for terminals or nowadays usually in
JavaScript, they can be made in any of these styles, but are usually in
lineart. There are also ASCII stereograms and many other wicked things. Some
people list lettering, signature art, illustrated stories and 3D as their own
genres, but they're usually just variations of line art (sometimes solid or
grayscale).
Things that can be erroneously believed to be ASCII art include Shift_JIS art
(text art using Japanese characters), typographic pictures, AOL macros (made in
Arial font and often including extended characters), ANSI and most of demoscene
"ASCII art". Another thing that definitely isn't ASCII art is those horrid HTML
conversions that are usually composed of 1s and 0s and would have absolutely no
shape with the color removed. These are sometimes called "text art" or
"character art", even though both terms can be considered slightly misleading.
I don't believe using a converter without any editing is really creating ASCII
art. It's image manipulation.
People sometimes confuse ASCII and ANSI and call either of them "ANSII". What
ANSI really is could be described as an extension to ASCII, allowing the use of
extended MS-DOS characters (such as so called "raster blocks") and 16 colors.
It was commonly used in the BBS (Bulletin Board system) world, but many people
still keep drawing ANSI pictures, even though MS-DOS is hardly used any more
and the Internet has largely killed off BBSes.
3. Drawing ASCII art
3.1 Starting out
Start up JavE or your favorite text editor. Think about what you want to draw
and what could be a good subject for your first ASCII. Try not to pick anything
too difficult, such as celebrities. Many people choose a house as their first
picture, but I think it's a little boring subject. Others attempt a face, but
that's much harder. Animals, plants and household objects often turn out to be
a good choice. You can either draw a single object or a scene, like a house, a
tree and some birds.
A reference picture may be helpful. You could also use a technique called
tracing which is explained later. Looking at other people's ASCIIs is just as
important as drawing your own, because you'll learn a lot of different
techniques just by looking at ASCII art. How do people achieve slanted lines,
how do they make fur look like fur and what's the secret of smooth curves?
Also remember the rules of normal art, like that eyes are located in the middle
of the head, not on the top. People are about 7-8 heads tall, unless you're
drawing a comic character. Houses usually aren't placed on top of the ground,
but on the ground. Perspective really improves pictures of cubic objects. A
house or a box without a perspective is pretty much just a rectangle, not very
interesting.
3.2 Lineart
Lineart is a good choice for an ASCII beginner. It might be a good idea to do a
rough "sketch" first. Draw the outline of your object and see if it bears any
resemblance to your model. Try to avoid using only straight lines and slashes,
that makes your picture look dull and awkward. Instead try commas, periods,
hyphens and apostrophes. It might be a good idea to sketch with periods first
and then change some of them to colons or semicolons, some to apostrophes and
then extend that.
Forget about shading, reflections and stuff like that. Try using as many
different characters as you can without getting silly results. You can get more
detail with lineart than with solid technique, but you still might have to give
up some for a better result. If you're drawing a face, you don't have to draw
every single wrinkle and you might skip the eyelashes too.
3.3 Solid art
Not many people start out with solid ASCII, but nothing says you can't do that.
Filled pictures are no harder to make than outlined ones, it just doesn't fit
for houses and faces very well. It's usually a good idea not to use outlines
with solid art. Some people use a different character for every area of the
picture, but I think it's better to stick with one or a few filler characters.
Antialiasing is very important in solid art.
3.4 Grayscale
Grayscale ASCII is difficult to draw, not recommended for beginners, even
though I know people who have started off with it with fine results. You need a
good eye for light and shadow and a good reference photo is a must, you may
want to increase the contrast of it. Picking the right set of characters is
crucial, remember that the "lightness" of some characters varies greatly
between fonts. Take a look at existing grayscale ASCII art or even converted
pictures to get inspiration for good character sets. Don't start out too small,
80x25 is probably the minimum you want to attempt and 80x50 is better.
3.5 Antialiasing
Antialiasing doesn't really apply for lineart the same way it applies for solid
and grayscale, but I think smooth edges are one of the most important things in
a solid ASCII picture (unless you're aiming for a different impression). Often
grayscale is drawn without any empty spaces in the picture, but sometimes
without a background and that's when you really need antialiasing.