Compose styles
Rather than blending styles toward a middle, this gives them roles. The first one carries the structure, the next comes in as the accent, and anything after that shows up in a single detail. Where they fight each other, it says so before you start.
How to divide the work
- Composition
- Follow ASCII Art: Fix the column width first and hard wrap so the figure holds
- Type
- Set in ASCII Art's manner (Pick a monospace face and measure its line to character ratio first), and let ANSI Art (BBS Scene)'s lettering (Letterforms built from block characters and completed with box-drawing pieces) appear only where you want the eye to catch.
- Material
- Ground in ASCII Art's material (One color of text, characters ordered from sparse to dense for tone); bring in exactly one thing from ANSI Art (BBS Scene) (Sixteen foreground and eight background colors, shading made by character density).
- Colour
- Build on #101510, #74d66b, #d9ead4 and admit one accent from #aaaaaa, #5555ff, #050203.
Where they fight
- ASCII Art and ANSI Art (BBS Scene) both belong to Lettering, so the difference is small. Push the roles further apart than feels comfortable.
Caution
- ASCII Art Type and leading differ on the reader's side, so art distributed without a fixed column width collapses into noise somewhere else.
- ANSI Art (BBS Scene) Shown in a proportional environment the columns break and the picture is gone, so building without fixing display conditions destroys it.
Image prompt
Produce four original images that take their structure from ASCII Art (technique, 1960s–) and their accent from ANSI Art (BBS Scene) (style, 1985–1997). ## What to make Make the kind of thing ASCII Art exists for: placing diagrams or titles inside terminals and logs without images, or signatures and distributed files that must work in text only environments. Choose one subject and hold it across all four. ## Structure comes from ASCII Art - Monospace characters - Character density - Terminal screens - Single color Composition: Fix the column width first and hard wrap so the figure holds. Type and lettering: Pick a monospace face and measure its line to character ratio first. ## Accent comes from ANSI Art (BBS Scene), used sparingly - 16-color text mode - Shaded block characters - Art-group signatures - The login-screen format Let one material quality come from it: Sixteen foreground and eight background colors, shading made by character density. ## Colour and feeling Build the ground on #d9ead4, carry the structure in #74d66b and #101510, and let a single accent come from #5555ff. These are read off real works, so a direction rather than a fixed palette. Feeling to carry: technique, nostalgia, play, rebellion. ## Where they fight - ASCII Art and ANSI Art (BBS Scene) both belong to Lettering, so the difference is small. Push the roles further apart than feels comfortable. ## What goes wrong - ASCII Art: Type and leading differ on the reader's side, so art distributed without a fixed column width collapses into noise somewhere else. - ANSI Art (BBS Scene): Shown in a proportional environment the columns break and the picture is gone, so building without fixing display conditions destroys it. ## Across the four Keep the roles fixed in all four. Vary the framing, the scale and the arrangement so the set shows what this pairing can do rather than four versions of one picture. ## Constraints - Do not imitate, reference or name any specific artist, studio, brand, character or copyrighted work. - Do not reproduce the composition of an existing work. - Produce original compositions in the general period languages described above.
Related entries
- ASCII Art 1960s– / Technique / Lettering
Uses limited characters on a monospace grid as pixels, building image and tone from text alone.
- ANSI Art (BBS Scene) 1985–1997 / Style / Lettering
Login screens and group art packs drawn in the 16-color text mode of the BBS age. Block-character shading and inter-group competition made the summit of pre-web screen decoration.
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