the anatomy of textmode artwork

Textmode artwork consists of only “textual” characters. The characters used for textmode artwork varies based on the text medium. The most common way of creating textmode artwork is by using a textmode artwork editor (TundraDraw is exactly that). One creates the artwork by placing characters which are mapped for convenience to the function keys. Thus pressing a function key, places a character in the character palette shown below:

Figure 4.0: The Tundradraw Character Set Palette
Common text characters used in ANSI artwork

In this example, pressing F1, places the character shown under the text F1 in the Character Set palette.

There are nearly infinite combinations of characters but mostly the block characters shown above are used. However, there are several text mediums and schools of design which deviate from this standard and use other character sets.



Examples of textmode artwork:

ANSI
Old School
New School

ASCII
Old School
New School

ANSCII


 

 

ANSI and ASCII are acronyms.

ANSI is the acronym for the American National Standards Institute.

ASCII is the acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange.

 

Even though there are several standards handled by the ANSI, artists and fans of ANSI art simply call it "ANSI" without any further explanation. "Cool ansi, man!" is one such example of proper usage. It is obvious that the scenesters using the word in this way are refering to the textmode medium of ANSI artwork, and not for example, ANSI C, or ANSI SQL 92. :)

 

Before Tundradraw, artists were limited to using 16 foreground colors and a measely 7 background colors. Jeesh!

 

Textmode artwork has been used for a very long time and not only by hobbyists or underground sceners. Text characters found in text art are also used for formatting professional console based applications.

 

ASCII artwork of the old school variety was notorious (and still is) for representing underground illegal activities such as piracy, hacking, and phreaking. The artwork used by affilications of such activities features old school ascii within the informational files that are packaged with the releases (.diz, .nfo, etc.).

 

Sometimes all it takes is good artwork to achieve success as an underground affiliation. Beautiful informational textfiles adorned with high quality, expertly crafted ASCII artwork is rare and artists who master the black art are highly sought-after individuals that can quickly gain notority in the computer underground using their talent and skill.

 

Textmode art is used prolifically on BBS's (Bulletin Board Systems) which are available via telnet over the internet. Bulletin boards were perhaps the catalyst that began the various textmode artwork scenes. Although BBS's are not as popular as they were in the good old days, many people still use them as BBS's provide a much simpler, contained, and privately moderated communications experience when compared to web based forums.