Search for ANSI and ASCII Artists and Bloggers

Except for some activities at deviantART was I not successful after over one year of searching to find much (if any) other blogs that are related to the old ANSI and ASCII underground artscene.

Fellow artists who created ASCII art for group NFO files, File_ID.diz or ANSI art for BBS Layouts and Login pictures and logos back in the early to mid 1990's.

It's sad and frustrating. The lack of community makes me spin off with my blog into other subjects, such as deviantART, Wikipedia and Cirque Du Soleil (or Internet Marketing and in a few cases about video games). I also was writing about internet video and music. Nice stuff, but not text art related.

I recenty created a new "Demoscene and Text Art Community" over at BUMPzee!

BUMPzee! is a blogger community / feed reader / networking site with some Digg features. I added another blog to the community, which I found at Blogspot, but that blog does not see much activity anymore either.



Where are you guys (and few girls) of the text art scene, demo scene and BBS warez scene? Nobody blogging? Nobody writing about things that were forgotten by most people and never learned by todays youth? Come on over and contact me and join the community.

Cheers!
Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Star Craft II Announced - Finally

I was still in Germany when Blizzard Entertainment released Star Craft and in Switzerland when they released the first and only Star Craft add-on titled Brood Wars.


I am in the United States since 2000. That is over seven years. It has been 9 years since I left Germany. This is an eternity in the realms of computer and video games. Star Craft was for Windows 95, Windows 98 was not even released yet. Do you remember Windows 98? Yeah, it is the Windows Version that was replaced by Windows XP, which was replaced this year by Windows Vista, that long.

While some spin off games were released for the Nintendo 64 (which was replaced by the GameCube and then by the Wii) did nothing happened on the PC. Warcraft 3 was released and the World of Warcraft, the huge online mass multi player success, which is played by millions of fans for years.

Star Craft fans started to believe that Blizzard would never release a sequel to the game, due to the overwhelming success of their Warcraft property.


Well, we were wrong. This weekend did not only rumors about a Star Craft sequel spread around the internet, but also videos that proved it. Actually Blizzard Entertainment themselves announced officially the long awaited sequel to Star Craft.

Here is the official announcement trailer for Star Craft 2 by Blizzard Entertainment

All THREE VIDEOS USED IN THIS POST WERE REMOVED BY YOUTUBE BECAUSE OF TERMS OF SERVICE VIOLATIONS. SUCKERS!

MOVIE 1

Here is a not-so-official video of actual Star Craft 2 game play

MOVIE 2

The third video shows a lot of still artwork shots of Star Craft 2 units and scenery as well as additional short game play video sequences.

MOVIE 2

Additional game play videos are available here. It shows Terraner, Zerg and Protos game plays as well as epic battles between the different races. Impressive is the fire power of the Protos mothership which takes down several terran battle cruisers with ease.

If you don’t know Star Craft yet, I strongly recommend to your to get a copy of the game and add-on today. I promise you that you will not regret it, if you like real time strategy video games.

Star Craft is one of the top RTS video games of all time.

The video game is available very cheap (mostly used), for example at the Amazon.com marketplace. Also the add-on Star Craft Brood War is available for only a few dollars.

Star Craft		Star Craft Brood Wars		Blizzard Entertainment DVD Collection

While I was checking if Star Craft 2 is already available for pre-ordering (no, it is not :) ), did I discover something else: Blizzard Entertainment DVD Collection - video cut scenes of Star Craft, Diablo II and Warcraft III, each on its own DVD. It was only $19.95 so I bought a copy right away.

Beck ASCIImation and a Walking Man 7-Bit ASCII

I came across two cool examples of ascii art made entirely out of 7-bit US-ASCII characters only, using only letters, number etc.

As a refresher, here is the complete US-ASCII character set.

US Charsset - ascii 32 (space) to 126 (tilde ~)
 
    ! " # $ % & ' ( ) * + , - . /
  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 : ; < = > ?
  @ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O         
  P Q R S T U V W X Y Z [ \ ] ^ _
  ` a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o
  p q r s t u v w x y z { | } ~  
 

The first one is a picture of a walking man.

The ASCII is pretty small (see full size picture below), but if you size it down to a degree where you can't see the actual letter anymore (see image to the right), you will notice how detailed the picture actually is. A true piece of art.




<------ ROCKS!
<--------- YEAH!
<------------- BABY!

<----- 100% PURE US-ASCII




The second cool piece of ASCII art I came across is a music video by Beck for one of his songs called "Black Tambourine".

I am not a big Beck fan and did not know about the existance of the video until recently. The whole video is in ASCII. A true ASCIImation. Awesome! Check it out!



Backup Link to Video at YouTube.

That's it. I just wanted to let you know about my discoveries.

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC