Talk: STOP using gif2asc !!!

Hey Boys and Girls,
        
        If you call yourself an ASCii ArTist, be original and creative!  
        Don't use tool like GIF to ASCii to convert drawings!  The pictures
        look unrealistic, <like a block of blurry stuff>, take up space,
        un-united characters all over the place....just...just disgusting!
        
        I hope I am not offending anybody, but I am really looking forward 
        to see real ASCii artists here, who knows how to imagine, how to 
        creat and how to DRAW!!  e.g. SCARECROW is a real artist! :)

Anyway, feel free to Respond, Attack or Second my opinion..

          
          
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                              ......                 k4l...@novice.uwaterloo.ca
                                ...           k4l...@wedge.watstar.uwaterloo.ca
                                 .                      ken...@golden.org
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Artistic Engineer
In the Middle of Nowhere.

725-6241

Painting with electrons, Artistic Engineer <K4L...@WEDGE.watstar.uwaterloo.ca> 
wrote:
>        If you call yourself an ASCii ArTist, be original and creative!  
>        Don't use tool like GIF to ASCii to convert drawings!  The pictures
>        look unrealistic, [and other not nice things...]
>        
>        I hope I am not offending anybody, but I am really looking forward 
>        to see real ASCii artists here, who knows how to imagine, how to 
>        creat and how to DRAW!!  e.g. SCARECROW is a real artist! :)
>
>Anyway, feel free to Respond, Attack or Second my opinion..
>

Personally, I tend to agree with Ken on this.  I'm not that great a fan of
converted GIFs and of having people posting them and calling it creative. 
There's bound to be a long discussion about what exactly is 'art' but in this
instance, I'm willing to call the GIF pix art.  However, creative art it's
not.  Not much work involved by just grabbing a GIF, converting it, and
posting it.  I'm a bit more lenient if the person goes back and edits the
picture before posting.  Touch up does require some amount of skill and
unfortunately not everyone does this.

To sum up my thoughts:

	1) I think it's ok to post converted GIF pix but not too many, and for
	   heaven's sake if you do, please go back and touch it up before
           posting a blob of ascii charaters.  Granted, some of the convert
	   drawings do look nice, but for the most part I just skip to the
	   next article if I see something is a convert, unless I'm interested
	   on the topic. 

	2) I'm a big proponent of original ASCII art.  I think it does require
	   a lot of skill and talent because essentially one is working with
	   a 'limited' palate - there's so many ASCII characters you can use.
	   I find a lot of the fun in the challenge of working out how to
	   create what I want with what's available.  People who say they
	   can't do it should just try a bit harder.  Practice, practice...

	3) Since I also keep the ASCII Chinese Characters list (which is a
	   collection of characters made up of ASCII Characters, not an ASCII
	   font per se) I find the more creative ones done by hand and not
	   by simply scanning them and converting.  The converts tend to be
	   overly large, blobby, and hard to read.  Most of the Chinese New
	   Year stuff is like that which is why that list is less organized
	   than the normal list which I enjoy more because of the original
	   work that's included.

Final words...Keep up with making original artwork and post them.  I've been
trying to answer some requests from time to time if I find the subject
interesting.  Let's see more original stuff and less requests.  Those who
request should at least attempt it themselves, post what they do, and THEN
request if it really turns out badly...

Ahem, Thanks for your attention.  [steps off soapbox]

Daniel
--
@@@@@@@   @@@@@@  @@@@@@  @@@  @@@    ^    Daniel C. Au
@!@  !@! !!@     @!@  !@@ @!!  !@@    |    dca...@casbah.acns.nwu.edu
!!!  !!! !!!     !!!!!!!! !!!  !!!  ._|_.  Northwestern Univeristy
!::  :!! :!:     ::!  :!: :!:  :!:    =      Medical School, Chicago IL
 . ..::   . : :.  :    .   : :: .     =    Ace Ascii Detective Extraordinaire
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                == Member of the ADA: Art Detective Agency ==     H