Entry: 73

No post in a long time. Well

I created a new group in DeviantArt, which was approved by the staff. I invite all my friends and visitors to my page to join it and to contribute to it. The group is titled "Oldskool-Art".


oldskool-art.deviantart.com

What is the group about?

Oldskool scene art, underground (Piracy/Warez scene) and "above ground" (PD - Public Domain).

Pixel art, ANSI art and ASCII Text art (including Petscii and Atascii) from the 8 bit machines like the commodore 64 (C64), Z80, Atari 800 XL(E) etc., 16 bit machines line the Commodore Amiga 500, 1000, 2000, 4000, 600 AGA, 1200 AGA, Atari ST, Atari Falcon and the good old IBM PC (VGA, EGA) you name it.

Block ASCII (High ASCII, Oldskool, Newskool), no matter what your favorite flavor is.

BBS (Bulletin Board System) artwork like login screens and animations, menus, stats screen shots and everything else that might be interesting for others or bring back old memories.

This group is about nostalgy, memories and preservation of history.

Cheers!

Roy[SAC] .oOo. ASCII & ANSI Text Art .oOo.Blog

Entry: 72

This question might seem sound stupid to some of you Photoshop Pros, but I have a little problem, which I never thought could be a problem, just to find out that there would not be a quick and simple answer as I would have expected. ..

I already hear the first shouts of "Stop talking in riddles and ask your god d*$m question already!" so I will get straight to the point.

I would like to use a brush... one that does not automatically anti-aliases, one that does not use varying intensities based on "pressure" and all that fancy stuff. NO,  a brush that lets me set ONE pixel (or may be even 4 (2x2) and so on and so fourth) ... in the color that I picked and maybe the opacity that I selected, if I don't want to apply the selected color to a 100% strength.

Illustration of my Problem


[link]

I have not found a way. I tried to create a brush myself, but they all kept setting pixels around the pixel that I set for anti-aliasing. I pump into this issue frequently, curse for a second, press CTRL-A (Select All) and then Shift-CTRL-C (Copy Merged) to paste the visible layers as a flat image into a plain and simple paint program... do my "precision pixeling" and then copy and paste the results as a new layer back into Photoshop. Not very efficient... not to mention that you effectively do a "flatten image" at that stage of your creation process, which becomes almost like a "no turning back point" ... that sucks, if you reach a point where you would like to turn back, but cannot, at least not without redoing a lot of stuff that you shouldn't have to redo, if I just could have do the pixeling within Photoshop (on a separate layer for example).

A tip how to do it would be appreciated... A link to a brush that does it also works. It would be a nice Christmas present. This issues haunts me for way too long already and I have not found anything on the web.. Well, It's a very ambiguous question to ask a stupid computer application like Google, so I decided now to ask humans .

Thanks a lot and Happy Hollidays!

Roy[SAC] .oOo. ASCII & ANSI Text Art .oOo.Blog

Entry: 71

I finally did it! It just took me 3+ years or so. All SAC art pack releases can now be enjoyed by anybody who is interested in it directly from the web browser, no special plug-ins other than Flash are required. I had to convert everything into web compatible formats to make this possible.  



For all of you who hate reading, check out the video that I created to show off the new stuff. You can find the video embed in this blog post of mine about the release.

The SAC homepage was up for a long time already and had a little bit of art content but SAC members produced several thousand pieces of ANSI, ASCII, VGA, Tracker Music and Intro artwork. The intros can be enjoyed as video capture. All tracker tunes were converted to MP3s and can be listened to via a single click on a "play" button next to each tune. The ANSIs were converted to images and ASCIIs are available in two different formats, 1) the image snapshot version (like the ANSIs) and also the Unicode text version of it as well.


- Browse by Artist
- Browse by Pack File

or browse the SAC Packs Overview Page and from there any of the pack release files as you go.

I created earlier already pages for the crack intros that SAC created for various scene groups, bulletin board systems or scene events. That means that those things are kind of duplications, but then. The special intro listings have features that I could not integrate into the SAC pack browser yet, goodies like download links to used resources, like the original MOD tune or Logo graphics. I also show not just the coders credits but full credits instead, e.g. the work of the graphicians and musicians. In those special intros pages are you also able to find productions that did not make it into a SAC art pack for any reason.

Cheers!

Roy[SAC] .oOo. ASCII & ANSI Text Art .oOo.Blog

Entry: 70

It has been about two months since my last post, which is by coincidence the announcement of the release of my Scene Logos Collection Volume 1.

I just released Volume 2 of the collection, because I added tons of new logos to it within the past weeks. You can find the download links and more information about the release at my personal blog here.

The collection has a whopping 9,000+ logos from the various popular computer platforms, such as the PC, Commodore Amiga, C64 and Atari ST. The collection is about 300 MB in size. My latest deviation is actually a collage of scene logos that I created for that release blog post.



I also released Volume 1 of the Pixel Art Collection by Artist, which contains many full screen pics by artists from the PC and Amiga for the most part. This collection contains over 5,000 pieces of pixel art created by over 350 different artists and is almost 600 MB in size.

It contains images from legendary artists such as: Acryl, Alien, Angeldawn, Antony, Archmage, Asphyx0r, BenJ, Boo, Bridgeclaw, Cougar, Critikill, Cyclone, Danny, Desktop, Dream Design, Facet, FadeOne, Fairfax, Flood, GfxTwins, Haplo, Hof, Inferno, J.O.E., JCS, Joachim, Kenet, Lazur, Lord MX, Louie, Mack, Made, Mantraz, Mermaid, Norm, Orome, Peachy, Pixel, Prowler, R.W.O., RA, Reward, Rodney, Saffron, Suny, Tenshu, Typhoon, Unreal Hu, Visualice, Wade, Walt, Ward, X-Man, Zaac, Zebig and Zone.

Again, you can download this Pixel Art Collections here.

Some of them even have a deviantART account. Guess who? (Tip: checking who I am watching might help a little with that hehe).

Roy[SAC] .oOo. ASCII & ANSI Text Art .oOo.Blog

Entry: 69

Good news for collectors like me who are interested in pixel art from the Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga and PC scene.

I packed my <a href=[link] alt=collections>collections of scene pixel art logos, over 6,000 images for over 1,500 groups, bulletin board systems, demos, intros etc. and also my <a href=[link] alt=collections>pixel art font sets collection of over 600 font sets from the Atari ST, Commodore Amiga and PC into TWO large files and made them available for other collectors for download.

I packaged them like an official release, with NFO file, file_id.diz and even created an intro for them as well. If you happen to run a BBS or FTP server or use any of them for swapping, feel free to download the collections and spread them around. The logos collection is over 160 MB in size and the font sets collection about 37 MB. Easy Credits

You can find the download links, more information and a video capture of my intro for the collections at my personal blog. <a href=[link] alt=collection>So check it out!

Cheers!

Roy[SAC] .oOo. ASCII & ANSI Text Art .oOo.Blog

Entry: 68

I saw Patgroove's journal post about the never ending problem of submissions to the wrong categories by fellow deviant's. He believes that the name of the categories are the issue and suggests the renaming of them. You can see some of the suggested titles for a combined ASCII and ANSI art category here.

I don't think that the renaming of the categories will do much good to improve on the problem. I just took the time to have a closer look at the current process of selecting the category for your deviation and tried to put myself into the shoes of a newbie, who is not familar with dA very much.

I show my findings in two illustrations with screenshots of the current process and comments added to them. see:

.oOo.                and            .oOo.

I try to illustrate how the category selection for deviations at dA could be improved to make it easier for people to find the right category and avoid the submission to wrong categories.

The current "Gallery Info" button only appears at the final submission category, which can be several levels down the category tree. The user who navigates the tree has no clue, if he already selected the wrong parent or even root category, because there is no information or guidance available to him.

Furthermore, the button at the bottom left on the screen is easy to overlook. I never noticed it myself and only "found it" when I was browing the category selection to see if there is anything more than just the name of the categories available in the process.

My Suggestion

The category browser should show the short description of each category that the user select, right then and on the same page, for example in the lower part of the category selection window (as shown in my illustration)

It is hard to miss and the user is able to see that he already selected the right or wrong top level categories before he navigates further down and there maybe finds a root category that sounds correct again. Also, the "Category Info" page does not reflect the actually hierarchy that the user is browsing. I am illustrate that fact graphically in my first (larger) illustration image.


Tweaking the name might also help, but I think that my suggestion in combination with well formulated short description for each category would help improving on the issue much more.

Here are for example my suggestions for the short description of the categories "Text Art", "ANSI" and "ASCII".

Text Art
Current Description:

Text art is imagery in which type either stands out on its own or relays a message through its visual appearance.

My Suggestion: Text Art is the creation of visual images made of text characters (such as letters and numbers) where the meaning of the letters is irrelevant and reduced to a tool or method, like the brush-stroke of a painter.

ANSI Art
Current Description:

ANSI art images created using an extension of ASCII art in which art is created by block and line art.

My Suggestion: ANSI Art is specific ASCII text art created in MS DOS on a PC, making use of the DOS extended character set and control sets of the archaic ANSI.SYS driver, which was depreciated with Windows 2000 and later OS versions.

ASCII Art
Current Description:

ASCII art images created using the 95 ASCII (out of 128) characters found on standard computer keyboards.

My Suggestion: ASCII art images created using the 95 ASCII (out of 128) characters found on standard computer keyboards and/or the MS DOS extended character set. The characters meaning is irrelevant, they are simply the means to create a visual image of some kind.

Now I will try to figure out how I can send my suggestion to the dA staff via the help desk. What are your thoughts and oppinions to my recommendation?

---

Now to another issue, that I just stumbled across because of this news article [link] about the lack of respect and community and the issue of trolls that seems to be increasing more and more. I have a suggestion for that as well

Trolls and trouble makers are hard to detect by any technical and automated system. Unlike mass spammers are trolls much less active, but more targeted and specific than a blatant spammer who just wants to self-promote himself.

The only weapon against those fellas is the community as a whole. Other social networks have the same problem and deal with it in different ways. One approach that seems to be highly successful is the ability for any member of the community to flag any content created by another member as inappropriate. In the case of dA would it be the deviations, the journal posts, forum posts, news articles and most importantly ANY COMMENTS made by another deviant ANYWHERE on the site.

A troll will become exposed quickly, if his comments (mostly) will be flagged as inappropriate by multiple deviants and not just the deviant the comment was directed to. If somebody writes a bad comment at somebody Else's deviation for example and I see that, I should have the option to "flag" that comment.

dA will need to figure out the threshold of "inappropriate" flags (frequency, from how many deviants, flagged vs. not flagged items ratio etc.) at which point a users behavior should be manually reviewed and decided, if the termination of that user account might be in the interest of the community as a whole. One "flag" or one comment should not be sufficient to trigger a review. This is going to happen to any deviant one day or another, without being a troll.

Enough of this. This post is alreadt way too long hehe.

Roy[SAC] .oOo. ASCII & ANSI Text Art .oOo.Blog

Entry: 67

Some of you might know already about my collection of classic nude text art, most of them going back to the pre-computer era of the teletype machines, called RTTY art, but also some more recent ASCII text art, included a few that are using the proprietary extended DOS ASCII character set (Block ASCII).

I collected a cool 100 pieces so far and they are a nice collection all by itself.

But I took it not long ago a step further and started to search for the original photographs that were used by the text artists as basis for their own text art versions of them.  I found the originals of 40 of the 100 by now.. and I am still searching for more.  

I have not found a smart way to incorporate my findings into the general nude ASCII art collection itself, so I created a separate page for it on my blog, which I called "ASCII Art Nudes versus Original Playboy Centerfolds", because most motives used where the Playboy Magazine centerfolds from the 60s, 70s and 80s.

There you can see the photograph next to the ASCII version of it. It includes links to the original text art versions, a larger version of the photograph, the image version of the text art piece and a non-proportional image of the ASCII and Photo side by side in one picture.

I also created a promotional video for the collections, which only speaks of 30 photos that were matched. As you can see, progress is made to match even more. The post where I introduced the video also has a call for help to match the remaining (60) old text art pieces to their original photograph whereever possible. You can help too. Hey, it isn't the worst job in the world to look at and compare pictures of nice and beautyful girls nude, isn't it?

Cheers!

Roy[SAC] .oOo. ASCII & ANSI Text Art .oOo.Blog

Entry: 66

I posted in december a detailed article at my blog where I reviewed various tools that convert images and photographs into ANSI or/an ASCII art. Converting images is one thing, but converting a whole video is another.

I came recently across a tool that does just that and not only does it convert videos as a whole, it also does the whole conversion in real-time and on-the-fly while you play back the video.

I wrote a post about how to setup the video to ASCII art conversion tool and use it at my personal blog.

My might want to check it out. Just because of the coolness factor hehe.

Roy[SAC] .oOo. ASCII & ANSI Text Art .oOo.Blog

Entry: 65

I posted last October about my friend Hugo and his not so pretty web site.

was so kind and created some logo designs for Hugo. Hugo realized that his site needs a bit more than just a new logo and asked D-Design, if he would be interested in designing his whole web site... and being paid for it of course.

This didn't get anywhere and Hugo is still stuck with his old site design.

If any of you who read this post of mine are interested in making some extra cash on the side, let me know. You can also contact Hugo directly. His contact information are available on his web site.

The work includes the creation of the graphical design and the creation of a template HTML page with CSS styles based on the created graphical design (that means that creating a design in PhotoShop only is not sufficient).  
This is rather urgent and work would have to begin pretty much immediately.


Hey, getting paid for what you like to do is great, isn't it? Don't tell me that all of you have too much money and too little time already....

Cheers!

Roy[SAC] .oOo. ASCII & ANSI Text Art .oOo.Blog

Entry: 64

For the past weeks I spent a considerable amount of time working on the SAC legacy. As you can imagine was this not an easy task, if you keep in mind that the legacy spans a time period of way over 10 years of producing art work.

My goal was to make the works by SAC artists accessible by modern day computers and specifically accessible via the internet and an ordinary web browser.

Almost every file releases in SAC art packs had to be converted to make this goal possible. Here are some figures to give you an idea of the scope of the task.

- 3,000+ pieces of ASCII art
- 450+ pieces of ANSI art
- 500+ pieces of Pixel Art
- 400+ Tracker Music files
- 110+ Intros/Cracktros executables

The ASCII, ANSI and Pixel art pieces were converted to PNG images. Although some of the pixel art was already in web-readable formats like GIF or JPG, most of it was not, using old formats like LBM and PCX, which are not used or supported by modern graphic applications.

The tracker music came in various formats like traditional Pro-Tracker MOD files, XM, S3M, DMF and IT. There were also a number of C64 music files in SID format. I had to convert all of those to MP3.

Most of the intros were written for MS DOS and do not run under Windows XP or VISTA anymore. I had to video capture those and save the output as a video file. I was able to convert most of the executables. Only a few are still unconverted.

I wrote in detail about the process and my findings along the way in multiple posts at my personal blog.

Interesting SAC Art Packs Statistics, Figures and Downloads
Interesting SAC Art Packs Statistics, Figures and Downloads - Part II
and
First ASCII Art Piece of Mine in Ages

Check it out!
Cheers!

Roy[SAC] .oOo. ASCII & ANSI Text Art .oOo.Blog

Entry: 63

I haven't updated my journal here at dA in a long while, but I wasn't NOT writing. I wrote actually quite a bit at my personal blog. Also a lot about art for a change .

Why did I not post here?

I am not sure. Maybe it is the lack of ability to embed multi media content like videos, maybe its that I do not want to simply duplicate what I already wrote at my main personal and art related (yeah yeah, don't say anything hehe) blog. I do a lot more with video content lately.

Here is a list of art releated high lights from the past few months. I hope that you might find one or the other interesting.

• Image to Text Converters Review


• ANSI Animations Part Deux


• Legendary Commodore AMIGA Pixel Art Logos


• Scene Pixel Art Font Sets Collection


• INC Rules! Flame War ANSI Animation from 1992

I was lurking around in dA every now and then though. I was never gone or something like that. Just in case that I don't be around or in the mood to write ... "Happy New Year!". I also hope that you enjoyed the holidays so far and will enjoy whats left of it also.

Cheers!

Roy[SAC] .oOo. ASCII & ANSI Text Art .oOo.Blog

Entry: 62

A friend of mine from the cold and dark country of Canada needs some help with his website, which is dead ugly... and the logo is the worst part of it.. THIS is his logo.  

I thought to myself that he needs SERIOUS help (oh my god, he likes it... well, he created it, so it does not count).



I am not that good with Photoshop (yet) to design a logo from scratch that does not look like a cheap Photoshop logo.

I helped him out with tips and recommendations and also edited two videos for him, which you can watch on YouTube at one of my accounts there: video 1 and video 2.

You can find more videos with demonstrations of his abilities at his own YouTube channel here. He is obviously a gifted performing artist, but he sucks when it comes to the visual arts hehe.

If you are interested to help my friend out (and the world who shouldn't be forced to look at THIS), let me know. If you contribute some quality work, then your gratitude will be rewarded.

Thanks my friends.. I am sure he'd appreciate it.
Cheers!

Roy[SAC] .oOo. ASCII & ANSI Text Art .oOo.Blog

Entry: 61

I wrote about a week ago a post at my personal blog about the expansion of the ASCII Art Academy that I made over the past weeks or so.

I added for example an ANSI tutorial created by the dA member Zerovision of Blocktronics to my site, after I converted it from ANSI to HTML and Images.

I realized during all this additions that I still lack completely a decent Block/High ASCII tutorial. I couldn't believe that I wasn't able to find a single one, but obviously that is the case.

This "blank" in my Academy drives me nuts. If I would have the time to write one myself, I'd do it, since I do know a thing or two about this subject .

But time is unfortunately scarse, which also prevents me from drawing much more new ASCIIs and ANSIs. So I figured that some help is what I need. There are two ways to help...

Option 1
If you know about a usable and not entirely worthless block ASCII tutorial, please let me know about it and send it to me or provide a link.

Option 2
If you happen to be an block ASCII artist yourself or know one personally and are looking for a job that not only ensures exposure to many people, because of the publishing of the tutorial on my website, for the world to see, but also something of long value. Groups and boards fade usually quickly, after a short period of fame (if that). Some of the request you do probably get the most exposure through the art pack where it was released with, because the site or group didn't even last very long after you finished the ASCII for them.

This will not be the case here. Think about it!

If you know somebody who could help via option 1 or option 2 or knows somebody who could, please relay my request to that person. I'd appreciate it. Thanks in advance already for your time considering it.

Cheers!

Roy[SAC] .oOo. ASCII & ANSI Text Art .oOo.Blog

Entry: 60

It started with my post here and I got a lot of feedback from the community.

I then posted an update here, where I also introduced a new avatar, that I just created. It was very well received and I decided to make it my new avatar for my dA account.

Here is the bugger hehe.

or the deviation

Thanks everybody for the comments, input and recommendations! I appreciate it.

I guess that I do not have to start a contest then, as I proposed in my previous journal post, right?

Roy[SAC] .oOo. ASCII & ANSI Text Art .oOo.Blog

Entry: 59

Because of the comments and votes received at my previous post and my poll, I did decide to change my avatar back to one of my earlier ones, namely avatar #2.

- Avatar 02

I will keep it, until something better comes along.

's offer to make me an avatar got me thinking.


How about a contest to create an avatar for me where deviants will decide who the winner will be? (Poll). Do you like this idea? Please let me know in the comments. Thank you.

Update: I gave it another shot...
How do you guys like this one? Two versions with different speeds. I prefer the second version of it better.

- Avatar 06

And here is another version of it, where I replaced "ART" with "ASCII". The "ANSI" animation changed also slightly (colors), due to the need to get the GIF below 15 KB (avt limit). It had an interesting effect though.

- Avatar 06 V2


Better?

Roy[SAC] .oOo. ASCII & ANSI Text Art .oOo.Blog

Entry: 58

I thought that it was time for a change of Avatar. Why?

Because I was not 100% happy with the old ones... I am also not 100% happy with the new one, so another change might be coming some day

I looked at the history of my dA avatars and realized that I was heading into a dead end from the creative point of view.

- Avatar 01

My first avatar was plain and simple, something that I created in a few minutes, because I didn't had anything for the 50x50 pixels resolution that deviantART wanted.

(p.s. Is it just me or do you hate it too that every damn site requires a different format and/or different dimensions for their avatars or profile images, 43x43, 50x50, 60x60, 64x64, 70x70 ... etc., only jpg, only gif, png and jpg, gif and png but no jpg etc.)

- Avatar 02

I created that one when I had a few more minutes to come up with something better. I liked the idea and that it used a DOS font and ANSI colors. However, it also looked a bit gay to me, what I am not. Nothing against gays, but I don't want to give an impression of something that I am not.

So I decided on October 3, 2006 to change it to this avatar.

- Avatar 03

It shows me, but as a caricatur, which is always nice. However, it was not animated. Also people told me that they old avatar was sticking out and made some of the people click through to my page and even added me to their watch list.

So I changed it again to this one.

- Avatar 04

It was a compromise between avatar 3 and 2 and I was somewhat happy with it. It also did not as much gay anymore. The path from Avatar 1 to 4 was a natural progression. Now I broke with it and tried something entirely different.

The result... this avatar:

- Avatar 05

One problem I have with the new one is the fact that many of the details of the larger version of the image got lost when I reduced the size to 50x50. I first reduced it to 64x64, because I thought that this was the required resolution for dA, but I was wrong. It looked a little bit better in 64x64 IMO. Well, we will see.

Update: You can see the concept for the avatar here [link]


- What are your thoughts and opinion on this?
- Do you like the new avatar?
- Do you like the old ones better than the new one?

Let me know. Thanks.

Roy[SAC] .oOo. ASCII & ANSI Text Art .oOo.Blog

Entry: 57

I wrote Depeche Mode, who have a MySpace page a long email over two weeks ago. I then went and published the email and some more background information at my personal blog. You can read the whole drama there.

Well, as expected, no answer from the guys. Go figure. They are in a good group though, YouTube itself is as responsive as they are.. or not.
I wrote and complained about that problem about one week ago at a professional blog where I write for. So far no response, despite my numerous attempts.

That says a lot about how much they care about their old and long fans. Be careful who you praise and support, they might not worth it. That things are not the same with everybody shows the example of VNV Nation, who also happen to have an official MySpace page. When I sent them a note a long time ago and remarked that I don't believe that they actually read their emails, Ronan (from VNV Nation) responded "of course are we reading the emails from our fans ourselves. Why would you think otherwise?".   I was surprised, positively surprised. This example says it all.



Learn from my mistake and don't repeat it yourself. It hurts.
Cheers
Carsten

p.s. the above image is also available as a higher resolution deviation. See

Roy[SAC] .oOo. ASCII & ANSI Text Art .oOo.Blog

Entry: 56

diamonDie launched recently an ASCII Art Contest. It's open to anybody and not just to deviantART members.

The prize is a Dark Domain DVD, which is a DVD-Rom with gigabytes of text art and othe scene art related content.  I blogged in detail about this contest. So check out my post at my blog or diamonDIE's dA news article for all the details (restrictions, deadlines etc.).



Cheers!

Roy[SAC] .oOo. ASCII & ANSI Text Art .oOo.Blog

Entry: 55

<a href=[link]>I recall the debate from last year when some of my deviations were moved and especially the hassle that it was to figure out who to address and hold responsible for moving my stuff.

It just happened again and I encountered the same problem as  last time. It is impossible to tell who moved the deviation. Guessing was necessary again.

<a href=[link]>Spyed, the dA CEO happened to post about the upcoming interface upgrade and I used the opportunity to recommend a minor improvement to the system.

"Last minute request to squeeze in, if possible. Please ADD the user-name (as link preferable) of the dA account who initiated the move of a deviation from one category to another and if the previous category is now blocked for that deviation or not.

The message is sent by the system account "devart", where replies end up in the nirvana or a black hole. It says to use the help desk, but that is way too much bureaucracy, because the only person who can answer a question or comment in most cases is the person who initiated the move.

The replies that I want to make (if I feel the need to do so) are usually a dispute of the new category, e.g. a move of an ANSI from ANSI to ASCII. A move that was either done in error or due to the lack of knowledge about what is what . No blame, here, because it is confusing, however, establishing communication is a pain in the neck."

I hope it will be heard and considered. The deviation I am talking about is this one [link] I wrote a note to arhcamtilnaad, who appears to be the Gallery manager of the Category "Text Art", if this list is the correct one to find out who the editor is for a specific dA category. It is not clear, if he did it and why (hey, a note field where the editor can add a comment to the artist with a short explanation for his action would be nice too). I will find out eventually I guess.

I don't think that I am the only one who dislikes the way forced deviation moves are being done today. I need the editor, because I cannot move the deviation back to where it belongs, because the previous category is now blocked for this deviation. What do you guys think about it?

Cheers!

Roy[SAC] .oOo. ASCII & ANSI Text Art .oOo.Blog