PENCELAND.com - ASCII Art


 ______  ______  ______  ______  ______      ______         __
/\  __ \/\  ___\/\  __ \/\__  _\/\__  _\    /\  __ \       /\ \__
\ \ \_\ \ \ \__/\ \ \/\_\/_/\ \/\/_/\ \/    \ \ \_\ \  _ __\ \  _\
 \ \  __ \ \____ \ \ \/_/_ \ \ \   \ \ \     \ \  __ \/\` __\ \ \/
  \ \ \/\ \/ ___\ \ \ \_\ \ \_\ \__ \_\ \__   \ \ \/\ \ \ \/ \ \ \_
   \ \_\ \_\/\_____\ \_____\/\_____\/\_____\   \ \_\ \_\ \_\  \ \__\
    \/_/\/_/\/_____/\/_____/\/_____/\/_____/    \/_/\/_/\/_/   \/__/

The first time I developed text art on a computer occurred when I worked at a company in the 1980s that had a central computer system where every workstation had 'green-screen' monitors (green dot-matrix lettering on a black background). I wanted to create a new logon screen showing the company logo (an old sailing ship riding on ocean waves surrounded by a circle) to replace the default logon screen from IBM. Working within the limitations of a monospaced 24x80 grid, I used different combinations of keyboard characters to achieve the many curves in the logo image. After my logo screen was implemented it was a joy to walk around our offices in Boston, Washington, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore and see my artwork displayed on every screen!
I had no idea that what I was doing had a following or even a name, but I discovered there were groups of people who had been creating text art regularly for years and posting it to bulletin-boards under the name ASCII Art. Even though the computer world continues to become much more graphical, ASCII Art has had a loyal following and new people are discovering it all the time. As proof of its popularity, I have seen on statistics for my website that "ascii art" is one of the most used search phrases that brings people to my site (this may change), which certainly motivates me to keep this page current.
I consider myself more of an enthusiast than a creative artist, so at the present time my personal contribution to the ASCII Art world is primarily to provide access to the works and resources of others with this webpage. I do 'doodle and dabble' a bit so maybe if I find the time I will create some more of my own and post it.

                     www
                    (o o)
=================ooO=(_)=Ooo===========================================================================================================================
  ____         _  _              _
 / ___|  __ _ | || |  ___  _ __ (_)  ___  ___
| |  _  / _` || || | / _ \| '__|| | / _ \/ __|
| |_| || (_| || || ||  __/| |   | ||  __/\__ \
 \____| \__._||_||_| \___||_|   |_| \___||___/

Unfortunately, ascii artists frequently create websites on domains like geocities, which tend to expire. I am trying to keep track of these and fix or delete them. Bear with me.

Individuals
Ascii Art by Henry Segerman – very good perspective art
     BBC - h2g2 - ASCII Art – Segerman's article in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Ascii Art Dictionary (Andreas Freise)
:joan stark ASCII Art Gallery: (Spunk's site doesn't always work)
ascii pr0n.com
     Faux_Pseudo – :F_P: has great stuff in alt.ascii-art
     bug (Blazej Kozlowski)
Veronica Karlsson's Homepage
Allen Mullen's Ascii Home Page
Christopher Johnson's ASCII Art Collection
gallery of original ASCII-art by llizard aka ejm
CeeJay Central - ASCII-ART
ascii art by b'ger (Joris Bellenger)
David's ASCII Art Pages (David Palmer)
Ascii by Lorrie
Ilmari Karonen: Ascii art
STARS WARS ASCIIMATION
oЄА`АЄo,ИИИ,oЄА Stronka domowa Goldmoon'a АЄo,ИИИ,oЄА`АЄo – love Goldmoon's title
[ The Sunny Spot ] ASCII-Art

Collections & more
ASCII-tism
AsciiArtGallery.com
Internet Smileys – to view 'emoticons', tilt your head 90А to the left, like this --> :o)
=a-s-c-i-i=e-x-h-i-b-i-t-i-o-n= – a German site (some English)
Signature Museum – click on Collections
Princeton Online - Incredible ASCII Art

Who is who in ASCII art
Compiled by Veronica Karlsson
Compiled by Andreas Freise

ascii arts ring

[ <<< ] [ list ] [ ??? ] [ join ] [ >>> ]

                     ////
                    (o o)        Top of page
=================ooO=(_)=Ooo===========================================================================================================================
  ____
 / ___|  ___  __ _ _ __  ___   ___  _ __  ___ __      __
 \___ \ / __|/ _` | '__|/ _ \ / __|| '__|/ _ \\ \ /\ / /
  ___) | (__: (_| | |  |  __/| (__ | |  | (_) |\ V  V /
 |____/ \___|\__,_|_|   \___| \___||_|   \___/  \_/\_/

I became fascinated with ASCII art when I first saw Bob Allison's work on his Scarecrow pages, some of which I have collected below. Bob, who was the moderator of the newsgroup rec.arts.ascii, had a website named BOBAWORLD that was so elaborate (here's a site map) that at first I suspected that Bob Allison was not an actual person but a composite of many people. His site, which ceased to exist in 1996, had many fascinating sections including Uncle Bob's Kids' Page (wonderful G-rated page), Spider's Pick of the Day (links to cool websites), The Michael Jordan Page (I believe Bob was from Chicago), The Web Masters' Page (great help with web-authoring, I have a link to a copy of this on my Online Tips page), a Beatles page, and of course the Scarecrow pages.

"People ask me, 'How did I end up moderating rec.arts.ascii, maintaining the ASCII ART FAQ, tending the Scarecrow's FTP site, keeping the Scarecrow's ASCII Art Archives, running the Scarecrow's ASCII Art WWW Link?'

The answer is, it just sort of happened. Since I liked it and collected it, and there was no big collections of it, I just formatted my edited collection, added comments, put a logo on it and offered it to the Net. I wasn't prepared for the response. I got bombarded with requests. After that, I made a FAQ, again because there wasn't one. Then came the rec.arts.ascii, the FTP site, and the WWW site." -- Bob Allison

There are archived versions of many of these pages around the Internet. You can find them by searching on "BOBAWORLD" or "Bob Allison" or "Scarecrow" but you will also find many links to to Bob's now defunct sites. Bob's reply to my email asking him why he took it down was, not surprisingly, "It got too big."

The Scarecrow pages (my saved copies of them)

Best of the Scarecrow's Sigs

Scarecrow's ASCII Art Archive 1.0 – January 3, 1994

Scarecrow's ASCII Art Archive 2.0 – March 21, 1994

Scarecrow's ASCII Art Reference 4.9.1 – September 25, 1995

Best of the Scarecrow's BBS Gallery 1.3 – May 16, 1994

Best of the Scarecrow's 3-D Gallery 2.0 – June 5, 1995

Best of the Scarecrow's GIF Gallery 1.1 – March 28, 1994

Ken Rohrer's Archive – nicely put together

                     @@@~
                    (o o)        Top of page
=================ooO=(_)=Ooo===========================================================================================================================
 _____  _
|_   _|(_) _ __   ___
  | |  | || '_ \ / __|
  | |  | || |_) |\__ \
  |_|  |_|| .__/ |___/
          |_|

Generally, ASCII art is presented on a webpage bracketed by the <PRE> ... </PRE> tags, which applies the fixed-width font setting in your browser and turns off word wrap. From a viewer perspective, if you don't like the way it looks in your browser try different monospaced fonts. Thanks to computers, text art is a very trial-and-error process. In the early days, when output could only be printed, I am sure it was much less elaborate, and the artists may have settled for less, but now you can just make the most miniscule modifications until you get it exactly that way you want, especially when working with greyscale and curves.

FAQs & tutorials

Wikipedia

Alt.Ascii-Art FAQ

Alt.Ascii-Art Tutorials – Andreas Freise includes many others

Veronica Karlsson – includes many others

Joris Bellenger – b'ger's step-by-step of converting gif-to-ascii

Bob Allison's Ascii Art FAQ (1996) – see more at the Scarecrow pages

Ascii Graphical Techniques by Rowan Crawford

ASCIItech – written by Jorn Barger in 1993, still valid

Tools

There is a variety of software to help produce text art, some that will convert an image file to an ASCII layout, which can be very helpful in getting started (see b'ger's tutorial link for a good description of this), but some say that using software to convert input is not "art", that it is only a conversion. Well, all artists use tools, and some tools are more sophisticated than others. We are already using computers instead of typewriters. Would these same critics not accept electronic music as art? FIGlet is a program that will convert a word or phrase into different fonts with larger letters made up of individual ASCII characters, like the ones I used in the titles on this page. JavE is a popular ASCII editor where you work in a grid (purists will criticize it for doing much of the creative work for you). There are many others, some of the older ones even DOS-based, but I have only used these.

FIGlet.org
     FIGlet Server - ASCII Banner/Signature Generator
     FIGlet Input Form
     ASCII Generator
JavE (Java ASCII Versatile Editor)

Signatures

ASCII drawings are frequently used in "signatures" that appear at the end of emails and newsgroup postings. Most email software can be set to automatically include signatures as part of the compose process. Years ago, if you received email from me or read something I posted, you may have seen some of the signatures I used. One of my favorites was when I had my name spelled out like this. You can see it better if you get back a little from your screen and sort of take your eyes out of focus. My name is outlined with the characters you see (I reversed the colors to make it a little easier to see).

(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((( )))) )) ))) )) )) ((( (((((( (( (( (( ((((((( )))) )) ))) )) )))))) ((( (((((( (( (( (( ((((((( )))) )) )) )) )) )) ((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((

or

)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))) (((( (( ((( (( (( )))) )))))) )) )) )) )))))) (((( ((( ((( (( (((((( )))) )))))) )) )) )) )))))) (((( (( (( (( (( (( ))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

But eventually I got tired of people unfamiliar with text art asking me, "What are those wavy lines at the end of your email?" I used the parentheses characters because I could not be sure what font the viewer would be using (I guess macros get around this) and I found that in most fonts, either variable-width or monospaced, ( and —a single parenthesis and a single space—take up the same width.
Here is a variety of ASCII signatures I have experimented with.

((((      ((     (((  ((      (( Eric Pence
))))  ))))))  ))  ))  ))  ))))))
((((     (((     (((  ((  (((((( email@domain.com
))))  ))))))  ))  ))  ))  ))))))
((((      ((  ((  ((  ((      (( www.penceland.com

((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((
)))))      ))      ))  ))      )))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
((((  ((((((  ((  ((  ((  (((((((((( Eric Pence ((((((((((((
)))))      ))     )))  ))  ))))))))) email@domain.com   ))))
((((  ((((((  ((  ((  ((  (((((((((( www.penceland.com (((((
)))))      ))  ))  ))  ))      )))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((

(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((
)))      ))      ))  ))      ))
((  ((((((  ((  ((  ((  Eric Pence
)))      ))     )))  )) email@domain.com
((  ((((((  ((  ((  ((  www.penceland.com
)))      ))  ))  ))  ))      ))
(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((

/////////////// email@domain.com
/////      //     ///  //      /
////  //////  //  //  //  //////
///      //     ///  //  ///////
//  //////  //  //  //  ////////
/      //  //  //  //      /////
////////////// www.penceland.com

email@domain.com :::::::::::::::
:::::  ___/:  ___  /:  /:  ___/:
::::  /::::  /:: ,/:  /:  /:::::
:::  ___/:  ___ ,::  /:  /::::::
::  /::::  /::  |:  /:  /:::::::
:_____/:__/::__/:__/:_____/:::::
www.penceland.com ::::::::::::::

email@domain.com
...._/_/_/.._/_/_/.._/.._/_/_/
..._/......_/.._/.._/.._/.....
.._/_/_/.._/_/_/.._/.._/......
._/......_/._|..._/.._/.......
_/_/_/.._/.._/.._/.._/_/_/....
www.penceland.com

email@domain.com
ЗЗЗЗЗ  .../ЗЗ  ...  /ЗЗ  /ЗЗ  .../З
ЗЗЗЗ  /ЗЗЗЗЗ  /ЗЗ ,/ЗЗ  /ЗЗ  /ЗЗЗЗЗ
ЗЗЗ  .../ЗЗ  ... ,ЗЗЗ  /ЗЗ  /ЗЗЗЗЗЗ
ЗЗ  /ЗЗЗЗЗ  /ЗЗ  ЗЗЗ  /ЗЗ  /ЗЗЗЗЗЗЗ
З...../ЗЗ../ЗЗ../ЗЗ../ЗЗ...../ЗЗЗЗЗ
www.penceland.com

email@domain.com
////////////////////////////////
/////      //      //  //      /
////  //////  //  //  //  //////
///      //     ///  //  ///////
//  //////  //  //  //  ////////
/      //  //  //  //      /////
////////////////////////////////
www.penceland.com

     email@domain.com
    @@@@@@\\@@@@@@\\@@\\@@@@@@\
   @@\\\\\\@@\\@@\\@@\ @@\\\\\
  @@@@@@\\@@@@@\\\@@\\@@\
 @@\\\\\\@@\\@@\\@@\\@@\
@@@@@@\\@@\\@@\\@@\\@@@@@@\
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
www.penceland.com

     email@domain.com
    ((((((((;;(((((((((;;;((((;;;(((((((;
   ((((;;;;;;((((;;((((;;((((;;((((;;;;;
  ((((((((;;(((((((((;;;((((;;((((;
 ((((;;;;;;((((;;((((;;((((;;((((;
((((((((;;((((;;((((;;((((;;;(((((((;
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
www.penceland.com

email@domain.com
----((((((((--(((((((((---((((---(((((((-
---((((------((((--((((--((((--((((------
--((((((((--(((((((((---((((--((((-------
-((((------((((--((((--((((--((((--------
((((((((--((((--((((--((((---(((((((-----
www.penceland.com

email@domain.com
::::((((((((::(((((((((:::((((:::(((((((:
:::((((::::::((((::((((::((((::((((::::::
::((((((((::(((((((((:::((((::((((:::::::
:((((::::::((((::((((::((((::((((::::::::
((((((((::((((::((((::((((:::(((((((:::::
www.penceland.com

email@domain.com
)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
)))))------)))------)))--)))------)
))))--)))))))--))--)))--)))--))))))
)))------)))-----))))--)))--)))))))
))--)))))))--))--)))--)))--))))))))
)------)))--))--)))--)))------)))))
)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
www.penceland.com

email@domain.com
*****  ___/*  ___  /*  /*  ___/*
****  /****  /** ,/*  /*  /*****
***  ___/*  ___ ,**  /*  /******
**  /****  /**  |*  /*  /*******
*_____/*__/**__/*__/*_____/*****
www.penceland.com

email@domain.com
>>>>_/_/_/>>_/_/_/.._/.._/_/_/
>>>_/>>>>>>_/.._/.._/.._/.....
>>_/_/_/>>_/_/_/.._/.._/......
>_/>>>>>>_/._|..._/.._/.......
_/_/_/>>_/.._/.._/.._/_/_/....
www.penceland.com

                    `}}}
                    (o o)        Top of page
=================ooO=(_)=Ooo===========================================================================================================================
  _   _
 | \ | |  ___ __      __ ___   __ _  _ __  ___   _   _  _ __   ___
 |  \| | / _ \\ \ /\ / // __| / _` || '__|/ _ \ | | | || '_ \ / __|
 | |\  ||  __/ \ V  V / \__ \| (_| || |  | (_) || |_| || |_) |\__ \
 |_| \_| \___|  \_/\_/  |___/ \__, ||_|   \___/  \__,_|| .__/ |___/
                               __/ |                   | |
                              |___/                    |_|

I used to have all the ascii art usenet groups listed here but they don't seem to function in browsers anymore, so I am just providing a link to Google Groups, where they are offered in a web format.

alt.ascii-art