Hey, I’m a universty student studying graphic design
I can’t recall how I stumbled across this website but its been in my bookmarks for a couple of years and I’ve found myself revisting regularly to check for any updates. Ascii/Ansi art is effectivley the first form of digital graphic design and as such I’m looking to cover it in one of my projects.
My research so far is only to a very basic level. I understand the basic history and how ANSI came about. However, I am looking to engage more with the community and possibly create a couple of pieces in collaboration with artists.
The outcome will be a short pdf format ‘book’ documenting some stand out community members alongside their outcomes. All will be appropriatley credited. (I’ve seen elsewhere on the forum a book has already been printed about ascii art. This is strictly a university project and will not be sold)
If anyone is prepared to help I’d be very appreciative. I’m looking to do the following.
Have some interviews with significant figures
Collaborate with an artist on a couple of outcomes
Futhermore if you could point me in the direction of any sources of general information/larger forums that would be great. Feel free to message me privatley or reply below.
There’s an interconnected chat group for 16colors, bridged over a few platforms where you might be able to find someone interested in helping you out more. You can find more information about it here.
I’m not even remotely close to a significant figure in the community, nor an incredibly talented artist but I wouldn’t mind collaborating with you on anything you’d like to draw in the medium.
The BBS Documentary (2005), has an episode specfically about the ANSI artscene, it can be viewed on archive.org (epsiode 5). Note that apart from the edited end results, the raw footage of the interviews is also hosted on archive.org. Some of them contain more detailed informated that didn’t make it to the final cut. (eg. the origin of the artpack format).
With regards to the community aspect: some artists are still active. They might be around in the above mentioned chatgroup. However, the majority of the active and passive artists hangs out in a particular Faceboo group: Ansi, Ascii Artists, and BBS Sysops Worldwide!, if you’re trying to reach a wider audience, that might be more effective compared to a volatile medium like chat.
Nowadays artists do also colloborate on “servers” to work on a shared canvas (a feature of Pablodraw and Moebius). Often those servers are private, but quite often collaboratiosn also happen on the public servers of 16colo.rs. Hanging out here might get you in touch with artists willing to collaborate.
Thanks so much for your help burps. Unfortunatley I was only given 2 weeks for this project and decided that the scope was too large for that small a time frame. I remain very interested in the scene however and will investigate these sources and chatrooms in my own time. They seem to go far more in depth than anything i found myself.
I’ve seen some of your things lda. That dali elephant is genuinley one of my favourites and i would love to do some work with you later down the line when i undoublty revist the scene for a later project.