I knew Joan from the newsgroup but I have not found her online since she left the ASCII art newsgroup/ community. I think of her often, at least as often as I still see her ASCII art ripped off online. She has a style I can almost always spot, even if someone has removed or changed the artist initials with her art.
Her kids will be grown up now and she won’t be fighting for computer time. I hope life has gone along well for her, where ever she is.
Joan G. Stark’s Original ASCII
Believe it or not, I “discovered” ASCII art in winter of 1995. I think I saw a tiny bicycle made in ascii characters and was totally amazed by it. I joked that someone must have had too much time on their hands! But still I was in awe of it… I didn’t even know what it was called. After e-mailing several friends, I found out that it was called “ASCII art”. It was then that I found the USENET newsgroup alt.ascii-art and started lurking to find more of these computer pictures.
I then started collecting as much of the ASCII art as I could. I began wandering through the internet and realized that there was way too much to save. I would forget my idea of having a huge collection… I know where to find the pictures if I want something.
Being a “crafty” type person, I decided that I would try to make the ASCII pictures myself. I’ve always like to doodle on paper, so I figured it couldn’t be that much different. My first project was to make a signature for me to use. I started diddling around with the keyboard in May/June of 1996 by doing lettering. Someone then told me about “FIGLET”. For those of you who don’t know, FIGLET is a computer program that creates fancy lettering from text. Hearing about figlet took the thrill away from making the fonts- I could spend an hour creating an alphabet by hand and someone else could just press a computer key and have the letters pop up “pre-made”.
And so I went on to the pictures… I know that there are programs available to create ASCII art — (I don’t know that much about them…) — but the programs usually create solid-type ASCII art. Even then, the pictures still are pretty rough and need touch-ups to make them aesthetically correct. I have collected some conversion software information from alt.ascii-art and offer them to you– no guarantees– .
I make the line-style ASCII pictures and I don’t believe that there are programs for this style. Basically I sit down at the keyboard and start typing.
OK– so I can’t consider myself a “newbie” at ASCII art any more. The honeymoon is over! I’ve been making the pics since 1996. Some people are anticipating my “burn-out”– but I continue to make the ASCII art pictures and I still look forward to improving. I’d like to be able to look at each of my creations and say “wow!”– there are some that I like a lot and there are some that I consider “ok”. Most of the crummy ones have met their demise at the hands of the delete button. Despite this, I’ve included some of my early works in this gallery so you can see how my artwork has evolved. Perhaps I may inspire other budding ascii artists…
I am just amazed at all ASCII artwork. There are a limited number of characters available on the keyboard and they are all fixed. Considering this fact, it is truly remarkable that there are so many different ASCII art pictures.
I don’t know how long ASCII art has been around. I’ve been told that it dates back at least to the 1960s when computers consisted only of large main frames. There were no PCs and no monitors. Transmissions were done through terminals that were very much like electric typewriters. Games and pictures were done in ASCII. (Remember the original “Zork”?) Some of the pictures passed around then are still being passed around today. See History of ASCII Art.
For me, the ASCII art is still pretty new … although I remember as a kid, my father would take me to work with him on an occasional Saturday. While there, I would play on the secretary’s typewriter and make pictures on a sheet of paper using commas and lines– my “first” ASCII drawings!. (I would also link all of her paper clips together– shhh, don’t tell my dad!). I had a lot of fun those weekend mornings… I guess you could say that I’ve been making text art — even before computers! :)
But times have changed! Gone are the typewriters, papers, and carbon copies. I doodle as I did as a child… but now I don’t need a new sheet of paper or white-out when I make a mistake. Sigh… and my children have already connected my paper clips together! :( But that’s OK, I don’t need them! :) I just have to fight the kids for computer time!
Source: About Joan Stark
Kaomoji Emoticons
Kaomoji are probably what you think of when you think of Japanese emoticons. These are text based emoticons made out of a wide variety of different 2-byte characters. Kaomoji means “Facemark” in Japanese.
Emoji Emoticons
Emoji are small image emoticons that were invented in Japan for use with cellphones. The word Emoji means “Picture Letter” in Japanese. Emoji are built into a bunch of different cell phones and are standardized across devices.
Source: About JapaneseEmoticons.net
I like having a real phrase for the text versus graphic image emoticons. I still think of emoticons as the basic keyboard text, ASCII style. I guess they could be known as ASCII emoticons.
Adding ASCII art to the source code (the HTML files) may not interest people who don’t look at source code.
The source code is an easy place to add ASCII art because those files open in plain text, no formatting or fancy fonts. So, the ASCII art shows up without much extra work, almost none in fact.
If you access your HTML files you can add ASCII art yourself, without the plugins. (See above). But, not everyone wants to do that.
WP Figlet is all about adding text created in ASCII art fonts (figlets). It even lets you choose which figlet fonts you want to use. The auto suggestions creates a figlet in your source code like this (you choose your own words):
It does work.
Source Code (although not updated in 4 years, also works). If you are timid about mucking around in the HTML files then either of these plugins will work for you. Source Code lets you choose to have the ASCII art in your header or footer. However, I found it did need the extra HTML code for keeping the formatting after I saved my text image.
One thing I dislike about Source Code is the lack of artist credit (artist initials). I checked several of the ASCII images available with the plugin and none had artist credits. I used my own ASCII image with my initials.
In the end… DIY.
Don’t be bashful about getting into your own source code. Skip the plugins and just do it yourself. Once you access the file it’s very simple to add the ASCII art with the code for notes. (See the first image in this post, no reason you can’t do that yourself).
I looked at 3 plugins to add ASCII art to your WordPress blog. This, Kilroy was here, is the first one I loaded up and experimented with. It does work but may not be the results you wanted.
There are no options to add the ASCII art to the bottom of your posts or pages. The plugin does place ASCII art at the very bottom of my site, under the footer. Below is my first experiment. I was pretty neutral with the results. But, I’m a bit traditional when it comes to the font I use. The spacing was out, the lines between text. Also, the top line of my art was pushed to the left.
I tried another ASCII, thinking a longer image would look better either way.
Adding HTML code worked to keep the formatting but, it shows up on the site.
Still it is nice to have a little surprise for anyone who reads to the end. So I will keep this plugin and see how often I remember to change out the ASCII art images.