Labels:text | screenshot OCR: (. . continued} Welcome to the ANSI scene. Welcome to the world of day to day plagiarism - usually with no consequence to the offender. It wasn't unusual at all, with WWIVNet sending ANSIs all over the country, to find some board on the opposite coast using your ANSI with someone else's signature tacked on the bottom. The result of plagiarism, when discovered, was usually just some flame-mail to the offending party along with a public announcement over the net. There are very few ANSI artists who have been drawing for any decent ANSI art. length of time who haven't been the victims of some form of plagiarism of their 1990 was the year that I started my own ANSI group: ANSI MANIACS. I first started recruiting artists from my local area. We probably had a motley crue of about 10 artists, if you'd call them artists. Only one of them actually stuck with ANSI art for any lengthy period of time - and went on to join one of the larger groups, too. Most of the local guys from the beginning eventually dropped out. This didn't matter, though, as we rapidly expanded, regardless. It wasn't long before I started calling boards in Philly. They were long distance from me, but I couldn't resist seeing what else was out there. In the Philly area, I contacted another young ANSI artist who went by the handle of "The Insane Brain." He had seen my work on the net and liked it. With his help, Ansi Maniacs soon had its own echo on WWIVNet called "ANSI Maniacs Place. of members. de became one of the chief forces behind the group, and helped recruit a number Before long, I had developed quite a reputation on WWIVNet and the boards which subscribed to WWIVNet. People wanted to be distribution sites, people wanted to subscribe to our WWIVNet echo, and people wanted to join. I wasn't very discriminating when it came to the applicants, and I tended to let almost anyone in who could draw an ANSI screen. This went on until we were almost up to roughly 100 members. By now we had two echos on WWIVNet. One was for posting our ANSIs, and the other was just for talking. We didn't do ANSIs for money. The possibility of actually making a few bucks doing ANSI screens didn't even occur to most of us at the time, although there were guys in Acid and Ice making their share of dough at the time. Back then, I was still motivated enough by what was going on in this "ANSI scene" that the compliments nd gratitude was all I needed to draw. I would get requests constantly from strangers asking for ANSI screens for their BBSes. If I had time, I'd draw their ads - no questions asked. It didn't matter if they didn't have wares to offer me, or if they didn't have "k-rad kewl affiliations." If they needed an ANSI, I'd do my best to fill their need. By 1991, I noticed there was a problem with how the public was viewing us. The average quality of the art was far below what I expected of Ansi Maniacs. My letting in over 50 untalented ANSI artist wanna-be's, just to boost the size of the group, had come back to haunt me. It was doubtfull that we had more than 10 to 15 artists who were any good. I feel it necessary, however, to mention some of these artists who were very talented, and went on to become big contributions to the ANSI scene. Relentless, also cosysop of my BBS and a local to me, was a good example of the student surpassing the teacher in ANSI skill. When I took a one month hiatus from the whole ANSI scene(as a result of a hard drive crash which lost many of my ANSI sceens), I came back to find that he had clearly become the best ANSI artist in the group, and probably in the state. Even though I made him vice-president, that wasn't enough to keep him in the group. it wasn't long until he finally quit Ansi Maniacs to find bigger and better things - namely, bigger and better groups. He first applied to Acid, but didn't make it. He then applied to Ice and was quickly accepted. (This was back when Acid still ruled the ANSI scene with Ice following closely behind) Being that he was in my local area, he motivated me to improve the quality of my ANSI art. Nothing improves quality more than competition. My hat's off to Relentless. Shihear Kallizad joined the group in 1991, though I don't think he released more than 1 ANSI with the group. When I finally decided to drop ansi Maniacs, it was he who I asked to seize the throne. He always showed a good understanding of how an ANSI group should run. When he joined Ansi Maniacs, he brought along his good friend, Logan. Logan was an extremely skilled ANSI artist from the start. He had a such a unique style that his ANSIs could have been identified even without a signature. They had a nice cartoony quality which was consistant in every ANSI. The quality and style of his ANSIs didn't change much over the years, but he was so good when he began that his technique needed little improvement even to compete with ANSIs years later. He was clearly one of the best at that time. When Ansi Maniacs finally was dead, it was Logan, Shihear and I who started DREAM(Dedicated, Reliable, Experienced ANSI Makers), which became a big success. After DREAM, Logan and Shihear both went on to be major forces behind such groups as iCE, Mirage and Tribe. Fusion, one of the underdogs of Ansi Maniacs, certainly was no Lord Jazz when he joined Ansi Maniacs. He even told me, once, that he was about to stop drawing ANSIs before I accepted him into Ansi Maniacs. For this reason, I think it was worth letting in all those seemingly untalented artists, when one of them eventually turned out to be such a talented artist. Two years after joining Ansi Maniacs, Fusion joined one of the finest ANSI groups in the world. Acid. [ "Life of an ANSI Artist" will be continued in the next issue of Alt-176! ] Cool T is a member of Acid!Ansi, as well as Art Director for Alt-176. 10
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