Here is a personal selection of ASCii/ANSi artwork I've drawn since 1997. Click on the filename to see a converted version in PNG. You can download artpacks they were extracted from in the releases section of the site. All the files starting by US- or WE- were drawn in cooperation with other artists. You can also check my anthology compilation containing all the stuff I released between June 1997 and July 1999, and some old unreleased stuff from 1997-1998. Overall, I've been active on artscene since 1997 and have mostly remained so until early 2006, although my contributions have been slow paced after 2001.
Everything can be viewed easily on Windows using ACiD View 6.
You can check the art either on this page by clicking on a particular filename to start the viewer, or in the gallery for easier browsing.
For an explanation of what ASCii and ANSi Art are, click here.
Another interesting reading is an article from an old French magazine (Page 01, Page 02) about ANSI.SYS, dating back from December 1993.
If you really want to know what it's all about, check these interesting videos from Assembly 2004: a seminar by Rad Man about text mode arts called "The art of textmode" and an interview of H7, Rad Man and Reanimator dealing about the actual state of the artscene. You can also listen to "100 years of the computer artscene", a speech from Notacon 2004 by Jason Scott and Rad Man. Download the mp3 here in 128 Kb/s or in 192 Kb/s. If you have troubles understanding spoken English, you can get the transcript here. You can also get the files related to this speech, containing music played on IBM hardware from the sixties :)
In 2013, Doug Moore gave a talk at BSides LV about the archival of textmode art which also has a part on the history of the art scene: "Archiving the Evolution of ANSI and ASCII".
As of 2019, there is a new documentary on the topic called "The Art of Warez", which is well worth a watch. The American National Standards Institute itself also published a fascinating article titled "ANSI Art and ASCII Art - Origins in Standards", which is very meta!
Another documentary on the art scene was released in late 2022, it is part of the "Back to the BBS" series of interviews.
In 2023, Heikki Lotvonen published an English translation of his BA thesis about Amiga ASCII art, which is the most comprehensive essay written about the Amiga ASCII scene.
In 2024, Australian artist sq2 came out of retirement and wrote an article about his involvement with ANSI art, which also touches on the social aspects of the scene.
Lastly, "ANSI" by Nootropic is undoubtly the best explanation of the medium and its surrounding scene ever written, and should be considered a reference.
