Line #39 Main/ASCIIArt


1	[[quoteright:288:[[Website/TVTropes https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/trope_ascii_art.png]]]]
2	[[caption-width-right:288:Fractal ASCII Art]]
3	[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII ASCII]] is short for American Standard Code for Information Interchange. It's one of the earliest input/output formats for computer systems, and one of the many predecessors to [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode Unicode]], which still uses ASCII for its first set of characters for compatibility reasons.
4
5	ASCII Art is the use of these characters in a way that makes pictures. The usual method treats the characters as pixels (best done with a [[MediaNotes/{{Fonts}} monospaced font]], and in a plain-text file) and placing the characters into the appropriate spots line by line.
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7	Some can even simulate different shades by using characters that take up different amounts of white space (hyphens and underscores take up little, and represent light shades, while pound and percent signs take up a lot, and represent dark shades).
8
9	Originates from the [[OlderThanTheyThink typewriter]].
10
11	Often seen in online game walkthroughs, like those at Website/GameFAQs. {{Message board}}s and software crack teams will have this as well.
12
13	As with any art, the quality of a piece of ASCII art depends on the skill of the artist.
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15	Compare the simplest form of this, the {{Emoticon}}. ScantronPicture is a more manual way of getting the same effect.
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17	''[[https://www.ascii-art-generator.org/ Psst... wanna make your own?]]''
18	----
19	[[AC:We don't recommend you try to actually post any on this page, unless it's really narrow. Anything more than half again the width of this picture would be screwed up by different window sizes.]]
20
21	!!Notable forms of ASCII art:
22
23	[[foldercontrol]]
24
25	[[folder:Anime and Manga]]
26	* ''Anime/PaniPoniDash'' sometimes replaced faces with [=ShiftJIS=] art.
27	[[/folder]]
28
29	[[folder:Fan Works]]
30	* There was, at one point, an attempt to re-create ''Franchise/StarWars'' in ASCII art. It got about a third of the way through. [[http://www.asciimation.co.nz/ Here it is.]]
31	[[/folder]]
32
33	[[folder:Film]]
34	* One character in ''Film/YouAndMeAndEveryoneWeKnow'' makes ASCII art as a hobby. He makes a detailed image of a tiger.
35	[[/folder]]
36
37	[[folder:Literature]]
38	* ''Literature/InformedSources'' by Willard Bain, 1967, has some real ASCII art, and some pseudo ASCII art. The whole book is in the form of teletype output (all caps!) Near the end it lapses into ASCII art, showing an aerial dogfight, but then uses characters which could ''not'' have been typed by a teletype terminal, as they are not aligned, and are partial overstrikes. Not an easy book to find, though.
39	[[/folder]]
40
41	[[folder:Music]]
42	* The back cover of Music/JagaJazzist's album ''The Stix'' has the album credits formatted in the shape of a mountain range. (It's not true ASCII art, as it's not monospaced.)
43	* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEXaEYpifhg This]] video for the Music/{{Beck\|Musician}} "Black Tambourine" is ASCII-licious.
44	[[/folder]]
45
46	[[folder:Video Games]]
47	* The good majority of {{roguelike}}s are rendered in ASCII art, including ''VideoGame/{{Rogue}}'', ''VideoGame/{{NetHack}}'', and ''VideoGame/AncientDomainsOfMystery''; some are using MediaNotes/CursesAPI.
48	** ''Brut@l'' (not to be confused with ''VideoGame/BrutalPawsOfFury'') goes a step further with this trope: characters, enemies, and objects are rendered in 3D, but are also decorated with their respective ASCII characters.
49	* The credits of ''VideoGame/{{Portal}}''. There are some in the source files [[DummiedOut that don't get used]].
50	** [[spoiler:Calling the BBS number gives ASCII art of what turned out to be official art from ''VideoGame/Portal2''.]]
51	* For awesome uses of ASCII art, there are modified versions of ''VideoGame/{{Quake}}'' and ''VideoGame/UnrealTournament'' that render the graphics in ASCII.
52	* This is actually how ''Franchise/TouhouProject'''s [[MemeticMutation yukkuris]] were born; the ASCII Art the original poster had used made the girls' heads look deformed, and the rest went down in infamy.
53	* ''VideoGame/DwarfFortress'', being inspired by roguelikes (and partly one itself), is made entirely in ASCII... Sort of. It doesn't actually output true ASCII characters by default, but rather uses a graphical tileset that was originally based on [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page_437 CP-437]], the proprietary "extended ASCII" character set that Microsoft created for use with the original MS-DOS. You can tell by the fact that if you look very closely, the "smiley face" characters (☺) that are used to represent dwarves have three-pixel beards.
54	** Also, the opening video is entirely done using ASCII as well.
55	* ''VideoGame/CandyBox'' is a text-based online game that has ASCII art as its graphics. Like ''Dwarf Fortress'', the game itself is much more extensive than the graphics would imply. Notably, most of the enemies in the first game are made of text such as "GOB" for goblins, but those in the sequel are made of proper ASCII graphics ([[NonStandardCharacterDesign apart from the rats in the starting cellar]], which are made of the text "rat" as a CallBack to the first game).
56	* ''VideoGame/SaintsRowIV'' At one point durring the mission where you recruit [[spoiler:Johnny Gat, Mat Miller]] screws with the graphics and turns you into a toilet and then the whole game into ASCII art for the time you are in the midway point hallway.
57	* ''VideoGame/KerbalSpaceProgram'' has its readme file headers in ASCII.
58	* ''VideoGame/Progressbar95'': There is a piece of ASCII art that depicts Clippy saying "Hello!" in one of the readme.txt files found when searching [=ProgressDOS=].
59	* ''VideoGame/VGAMiner'': If you die, you get an ASCII tombstone reading, "Here lies a brave miner. He died with his tool in his hand, for the love of sweet Miss Mimi. His Bank Account was (amount)"
60	* ''VideoGame/PyramidBuilder'': The graphics of the entire game are made of ASCII characters.
61	* The PlatformHell game ''Jinsei Owata no Daibouken'' has graphics mostly based on an extended Japanese character set, with characters based on memes from Japanese ImageBoards. FloatingPlatforms, for example, are drawn as [ニニニ].
62	[[/folder]]
63
64	[[folder:Webcomic]]
65	* ''Webcomic/SquareRootOfMinusGarfield'':
66	** "[=ASCIIfield=]" converts a ''ComicStrip/{{Garfield}}'' comic into simplistic ASCII text.
67	** "[=ASCIIfield=] Mark II", released a month later, is much larger and more detailed, with colored text.
68	** "Jon's Dungeon" is styled after ''VideoGame/NetHack'', complete with the characters and objects being represented by ASCII characters.
69	** "[=GarfASCII=]" is done in colored ANSI art.
70	[[/folder]]
71
72	[[folder:Web Original]]
73	* ''Website/AdventOfCode'' is made up of ASCII art.
74	* ''WebAnimation/HomestarRunner'':
75	** In the WebAnimation/StrongBadEmail "virus", Marzipan is turned into an ASCII art version of herself that speaks in distorted gibberish when she tries to talk.
76	--->'''Strong Mad:''' I CAN'T SPELL YOU!
77	** In "the paper", during a flashback to the day Strong Bad and the Paper met, a young Strong Bad is seen wanting to print out "that butt I made out of hyphens and dollar signs". At the end of the email, the New Paper tries to mollify Strong Bad by printing out a reproduction of said ASCII art butt.
78	* ''Webcomic/{{monospace}}'' is a {{webcomic}} based on this concept.
79	* ''WebVideo/TheMostStupidDeathsInSuperMario64'' has an ASCII Kirby (actually the Bracket Guy) show up.
80	* ''Website/SCPFoundation'': SCP-079, a self-aware AI on a 70's era computer, will display an ASCII image of a giant X on his screen when it refuses to speak. Containment procedures recommend waiting 24 hours after this happens to speak with it again.
81	[[/folder]]
82
83	[[folder:Western Animation]]
84	* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' had a couch gag with ASCII art.
85	* ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'': In "Holly Jolly Secrets", BMO printed an ASCII picture of Gunter while analyzing the Ice King's video diaries.
86	[[/folder]]
87
88	[[folder:Other]]
89	* Taken to ridiculous extremes by the Japanese, who have thousands of characters in their fonts and aren't afraid to use them. 2Channel even has a whole board for it. Although technically speaking, this is Shift-JIS art, not ASCII art (look it up).
90	* [[http://wikifaqs.net/index.php?title=LUEshi LUEshi]], an ASCII rendering of the ''VideoGame/SuperMarioWorld'' box art, is the mascot of LUE, a board on [=GameFAQs=].
91	* [[https://web.archive.org/web/20150112005945/http://www.rinji.tv/densha/ ''Densha Otoko'']], ''Train Man'' in English, has a lot of ASCII art. It is touted as an actual, somewhat edited, stream from 2ch. Worth reading. Note that the ASCII art requires that you have the Japanese fonts installed.
92	* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII_porn ASCII Porn]]. Yes, [[Rule34 this exists]].
93	* A forum {{Troll}} has [[MemeticMutation several stock ASCIIs]], including:
94	** The [[Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration Captain Picard]] FacePalm
95	** [[MemeticMolester Pedobear]] shows an interest in certain subjects.
96	*** ''Dateline'''s Chris Hanson would like you to [[CaughtWithYourPantsDown take a seat right over there]]...
97	** ''Webcomic/DinosaurComics' T. rex'' yelling.
98	** [[WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy Blaccuweather reporter Ollie Williams]] popping in for a quick update of his opinion of the topic..
99	** [[Franchise/StarWars Admiral Ackbar]] may have a timely warning!
100	*** [[Anime/YuGiOh You fool! You've activated my trap card!]]
101	** The middle finger salute one.
102	* For AprilFoolsDay 2010, Platform/YouTube had a filter for at least half of the available videos named "[=TEXTp=]" which rendered different ASCII characters for different shades of a color. It was TooCoolToLive, unfortunately. VLC Media Player does have [[http://windowsvj.com/wpblog/2010/03/vlc-media-player-ascii-mode/ a similar effect]], though.
103	* ／人 ◕‿‿◕ 人＼ - Kyubey's {{perpetual smile\|r}} from ''Anime/PuellaMagiMadokaMagica'' has hit memetic status. It's difficult to find a Madoka-related video on [=YouTube=] that doesn't have it in any of the comments.
104	** Similarly, Rainbow Dash's memetic "so AWESOME" face from ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'', "/)^3^(", has been adopted as an emoticon by a lot of the fandom.
105	* Some users of Website/{{Facebook}} occasionally decorate their status messages with Unicode art: the Latin-1 range, stars, Japanese characters, box drawing characters, etc.
106	** It's also possible to make "Unicode graffiti" using certain combining characters that stack on top of each other. When enough are stacked, they will overflow and potentially litter the text that is above them.
107	* In the early '90s, Microsoft Works for DOS included a tutorial program that featured a goodly number of animated slides rendered entirely in 16-color ASCII art. Why? ''Because they could.''
108	[[/folder]]

Context Main / ASCIIArt