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:
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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. |
- ANSI
Figure 4.1: The Traditional 4bit Color Palette Ansi artwork is created on a canvas of 80 columns wide text. The color palette consists of 16 foreground colors, and 8 background colors. There are extensions to this basic color palette that allow for 16 foreground colors on 16 background colors (traditionally this is called iCE color). These colors are in the 4 bit range. Tundradraw extends this palette even further by employing a 24 bit palette, giving the textmode artist 16.7 million foreground and background color posibilities. - Old school
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In old school ansi, the method of shading is loose and rough, using all block function keys; F1, F2, F3, to F4 to create gradual shading and blends of foreground and background colors. The F1, F2, and F3 keys are dithered characters providing increasing pixel coverage from low, F1, which is only a few dots of foreground color, to medium, F2, which is a checkered dither pattern of foreground and background color, to F3 which is an inverse of foreground/background mapping dither of F1 to F4 which is a solid block. This method is slightly different than new school ansi. Note that the characters used to create ansi artwork are in the high range of the ASCII character set.
Figure 4.2: Blocks used for old school ANSI These characters are used in old school ansi. Note; the foreground color pictured here is white, and the background color is red.
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- New school
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In new school ansi, the method of shading is tight and definite. F2 is very rarely used to create gradual shading, and it usually goes from F1 to F3 to F4 for a shading pattern. This school of design is hard to describe as it is still evolving and growing. Another new school form is to shade without using any dithering, that is omission of F1, F2, and F3 entirely in favor of solid colors without dither patterns. Some people call this “toon” work but it isn't always the case.
Figure 4.3: Blocks used for new school ANSI
or only solids:
These characters are used in new school ansi. Note; the foreground color pictured here is white, and the background color is red. Also note that the omission of the F2 block is a signature of new school ansi.
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- Old school
- ASCII
ASCII artwork is created using only the available printable characters of the ASCII character set. Thus the term given to this mode of art is ASCII. Even though ANSI artwork is technically a part of ASCII, calling ANSI artwork ASCII is incorrect. Which characters used determines what school of design the artwork is categorized as. Unlike ANSI, pure ASCII artwork does not have any color palette and uses whatever the defaults are for the console (typically this is white on black). Thus, one can create ASCII artwork using any text editor.
- Old school
- Old school ascii uses characters that are in the lower range of the ascii character set.
Figure 4.4: Characters used for old school ASCII It is also common to find ANSI block characters devoid of color within old school ASCII artwork. This type of artwork is typically found in underground communication text files such as .NFO and .DIZ files.
Old school ascii is created using only the characters shown here. Notice that all of the characters are available on a regular keyboard bypassing the need of any special editor to create it.
- Old school ascii uses characters that are in the lower range of the ascii character set.
- New school
- In contrast to old school ascii, the new school mode of design forces no limtation and any printable ASCII characters can be used to create artwork. Solids are created typically using the dollar symbol ($) because the character spreads itself wide and covers most of the character slot on the canvas. The only characters typically not used by new school ASCII artists are the block characters used in ANSI artwork.
- Old school
- ANSCII
This mode of design involves pretty much no-holds-barred anything goes text artwork. New school ASCII with colors added, or old school ASCII with colors added makes the design ANSCII (a hybrid of ANSI and ASCII -- clever is it not?)