Labels:text | screenshot | purple | colorfulness OCR: Excerpt from "Life of an Ansi Artist" by Cool T In december of 1988, I downloaded an ANSI editor called "The Draw." This download was what would start my hobby of creating ANSI Art for years to come. At this time, I was 14 years old and had been calling BBSes in my local area for almost a year. Prior to the discovery of ANSI Art, I was a trouble maker on all the local boards. Now I could affect the scene in a more positive way. I remember the first time I drew an ANSI screen, it was on an old XT with a 12" green, monochrome monitor. I couldn't tell which colors I was using until I later brought one of my ANSI creations over to a friend's house, and viewed the 25-line screen on his VGA monitor. We all got a pretty good laugh when we discovered that my little christmas scene was drawn all in gray, except for the christmas tree in the center of the ansi. That was purple. I made a little "translation table" on a piece of paper which showed me which numbers in The Draw made certain colors. For example, 15 is bright white, and 1 is dark blue. Now, although I couldn't see what my ANSI screens looked like in color, I atleast knew what colors I was adding to the ANSI, SO I had a rough idea of what the ANSI would look like in color. I'm not entirely clear about what my first ANSI screen was. I know it might have been of a hockey goalie, which I made for my friend's bbs: The Ice Rink. It also may have been my little ANSI of a living room christmas scene, which eventually was complete with flickering(using blinking characters) fireplace and all. Both ansis were done at roughly the same time, anyway. Before long, I was drawing ANSI screens every day - mostly as BBS ads or menus for the local boards. I also began to learn the art of ansimation at this time, and did a lot of experimenting with it, which would pay off down the road. Around 1988 and 1989, there weren't many ANSI artists in my local area. I remember one ANSI artist, probably the only one with any talent in my area, who was particularly good, and unchallenged by anyone else. His handle was Smitty, and he produced ANSIs for many of the local boards. I don't know what happened to him, or where he is today, but he was an inspiration to me at that time. While he was around, I never could out-do him. Years later, however, I would look back at those screens which I once was in awe of, and just laugh. It's funny how that happens with ANSI art. The Draw only supported 25 lines, so in the late 80's and even in the beginning of 1990, all you would see was 25-line ansis. Artists of this time period took much more care in how each individual block was placed. Detail was of the essence. I know that may sound silly when talking about an art medium which brings to mind such a lack of detail by nature, but it's true. If you were an ANSI artist in the "early days," you only had 25 lines to create a picture that had to be recognized by the users quickly and easily. To get an idea of this, go into your favorite high resolution paint program and zoom in until each block is about the size of an ANSI block. Now try making a picture that is not only aesthetically pleasing, but can be recognized as «something* while being viewed in this blocky, pixelized fashion. Being able to complete such a task succesfully was the sign of a skilled ANSI artist. I spent most of 1989 drawing ANSI screens for the surrounding area BBSes, still using my little monochrome monitor. The ANSI screens I produced back then, like most ANSIs of that time period, couldn't touch the quality of the average ANSI screen being released today, regardless of length. It's always surprised me how much the overall quality of ANSI art has improved, though we're still drawing the same blocky, 80x25 resolution, 16-color screens we've always drawn. It's been a slow evolution. In 1990, I began to communicate with other ANSI Artists over WWIVNet; primarily the WWIVNet ANSI Art Gallery, run by George Ramos. George and I would become pretty good friends over the next few years, and I even handled some of his requests when he became overburdened with them. George was one of the best ANSI artists outside of the "elite ansi scene" from 1990 to 1993. Even in 1990 and 1991, he rivaled many of the best artists in groups like Acid and Ice. He had a rather unique style, in which he didn't use any of the "shading blocks," as they're called (F1/F2/F3 blocks), in his ANSIs. I would compare his style to JED of Acid. The content of George's ANSI art differed to most of what was going on in the scene at that time. While most of the kids out there were drawing a lot of evil-looking ANSIs, full of skulls and dripping blood, George was drawing pretty flowers, farm animals, and many other beautiful scenes. In other words, you would be much better off showing George's ANSIs to your grandmother than showing Natas's. For this reason, George's work was often overlooked by artists who thought of themselves s "elite." They liked the dark-looking, evil ANSIS; not some ANSI of kittens or flowers. The only time I can recall when George Ramos's work broke through the scene's invisible boundaries, was in the original Acid Acquisition, released in 1990. The founder and president of Acid(and still to this day), Rad Man, took one of George Ramos's Christmas ANSIs, removed his signature, made a few slight changes, and signed it with the Acid trademark signature. It's pretty ironic that despite all the joking done about "PD artists" and "WWIV artists" by people in the "elite ANSI scene," the most elite ANSI group in existance found it necessary to plagiarize a so-called "PD artist's" work. [continued . . }
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