How Can You Create ASCII Art Quickly?

Once upon a time, before the advent of super-realistic, imagination-killing 3D graphics, early computers were only able to show text. Despite this, some creative souls used letters, numbers, punctuation marks, and other characters to create art. Thus ASCII Art was born.

Need some examples? Check these out:

belleascii.gif bilde_5.png

It’s obvious creating ASCII Art is time-consuming. At least it’s easier than “Keyboard Art,” but ASCII Art still takes some planning and patience. Luckily, the computer is good at automating things; it literally took me a few seconds to come up with this:

truthascii.jpg

Amazed? Check out asciiconvert.com and you’ll see how I did it. You might wanna try out this ASCII Generator that creates big titles (by using FIGlet), and look through this gallery.

ASCII Art is far from dead by the way; check out it’s Wikipedia entry for more info.

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6 Responses to “How Can You Create ASCII Art Quickly?”

  1. 1 Liz Strauss

    Hi Rico,
    I tried this yesterday when I took a break. I’m woefully inadequate at it. I’ll have to stick to other pursuits for my “take a break” entertainment. :)

  2. 2 Rico

    Hi Liz, what would those “other pursuits” be? I might find them interesting too. Btw, I’m amazed someone as prolific as you still has time for taking breaks. :-o

  3. 3 seav

    Hmmm… I wouldn’t consider he “truth” art to be ASCII art. ASCII should not depend on the colors of the character or the background. It should only depend on the shapes of the characters or the “boldness” of the characters. :)

  4. 4 Rico

    I see your point seav. Perhaps the ASCII Belle (the first picture in this post) could be considered “true” ASCII art?

  5. 5 Liz Strauss

    Hi Rico,
    Usually, when I need break I look for things that DON’T involve words. I play in paint or photoshop . . .

  6. 6 seav

    Yeah, I think the Belle art is a true ASCII art. The grayscale version of the bird image (found in the Wikipedia article you linked to) is also valid, but I don’t think the colored version is still valid.

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