Re: LOOKING FOR EXPERIENCED ASCII/ANSI ARTISTS

On 01 Mar 2001 21:07:20 GMT, spu...@aol.comQQ (Spunk1111) wrote:

>><9Uan6.334495$JT5...@news20.bellglobal.com>
>
>>If you are an experienced ansi/ascii artist and understand the ansi/ascii
>>scene, please email me
>
>ok... I've been around ASCII art for nearly
>5 years.... just what exactly *is* the
>"ascii scene"?

Ok, this is going to be a long one .. Sit back.

In the real world, there are many kinds of scenes.. There's the hollywood
actor scene, the rock scene etc. Because people tend to arrange into groups,
it's only natural to have different scenes in computing too.

The modern scenes really kicked off in the early '80s when the Commodore 64
came out. People started cracking copyprotections from games and releasing
them. This was the birth of the cracking scene. Later on when the programmers
became more skillful, they started adding small "intros" in front of the games
they cracked to get more fame and say "I was there first"..

Later on, programmers got even more skilled and started programming just these
intros and later on also demos, which are a bit like several intros combined,
or nowadays one long demonstration without distinct parts.

Both of these scenes still live on.. Several other 8-bit computers got their
own scenes after the C-64 and almost all popular computers after that have
either had or still have one.

Sceners appear behind an alias, "handle". Depending on the legality of the
scene, the member's real name might never be known by others.. Legal scenes
(demoscene, and all that's come that route) usually know their member's real
names too.

All sceners belong to one or several groups.. Not too many freelancers exist
as especially in the demoscene, it's not very common for one person to be an
excellent programmer, musician and graphics artist at the same time.

Ok, that was the basics on what scene is. Here's a little more detail:

Back in the early days, it was all about fame. Competition was fierce.. 0 day
releases were everything for a group to be elite.. In the demoscene it was new
routines and cooler demos.. Breaking previous records. 

There were charts where you could vote your favourite dude and of course there
was lots of respect for the coolest groups and people.. It was quite childish
when you look back at it, but then again, most members were quite young back
then. Nevertheless, those guys were and still are VERY talented.. The routines
those people programmed, the songs they composed, the pictures they drew..
Very nice stuff all together. It's no wonder many old demoscene people are now
in new media or the music business.

Nowadays it's more about friendship. People have gotten older and wiser, the
respect for the best guys is still there, but people are generally less
arrogant. The warez scene is still in that old fame system, 0-day releases
etc..

Now to the ascii scene.

Back in the day when bulletin board systems were common, before the internet
became popular, the system operators (sysops) often decorated their BBS's with
ascii art. It was the natural thing to do as they were connected to with
either real terminals (rare) or home computers running terminal emulators
(common). More and more people started designing art, and because the most
common terminal used was the ANSI terminal, people added colour and bold +
underline codes to their art.

The pirate and demo scenes also had their often closed BBS systems to spread
their releases. The BBS scene was closely intervowen with the pirates and demo
makers, but there were also many people who only traded the software, without
real talent. In the BBS scene, speed was also crucial to every elite bbs.. Old
warez == lame BBS. There were also charts of who uploaded the most per month
etc, and the competition + respect + elitism was there too.

Out of this, sprang yet another "subscene", the Ascii scene. Most ascii
artists of that time were members of one of the previously mentioned scenes..
Pirate, demo, BBS, what have you.. They made art for the elite boards and
groups. Most releases have an information file where the group gives
information about the release, their members and maybe some news etc. These
files have ascii art in them.

So, that gives you a short, very messy description of the scene.. Also a bit
of the ascii scene.. It's a scene among others.

Please ask for details if you by any chance became interested.. I'm quite sure
you really couldn't care less and I'm in no way surprised if you don't. The
scene is of importance only to the people participating and in the eyes of an
outsider it all seems very meaningless indeed.

>What do people do w/
>the monthly art packs?  What is the
>purpose of a group?  I still don't understand...

The purpose of a group was explained before; more people are more powerful
than a single person.

The art packs often carry designs a person made.. For example there might be
several logos for different groups for them to use in their info files, thus
giving the author some fame. :-) Also smaller art for use in descriptions for
the files people uploaded to the BBS's.

>sigh...

Hehe.. :-) I'll bet you double sighed after this boring post.. :-D

But in a way, alt.ascii-art is an ascii art scene in it's own way.. We just
don't have groups, fame-fighting and all that stuff.. We're still part of
something most people aren't even aware exists. :-)

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