| ASCII Art - The Concept | | | | creation properly, if the characters other than the |
| Created by the American National Standards | | | | 95 standard keyboard characters are used. |
| Institute, this art form refers to the use of | | | | This art form refers to the creation of pictures |
| character codes to create art forms. ASCII is an | | | | without any graphics. The artwork is also referred |
| acronym for "American Standard Code for | | | | to as "non-graphical graphics." To view ASCII art |
| Information Interchange." This universally | | | | properly and accurately, it must be displayed in a |
| acceptable character coding that is alphabet based. | | | | font that uses uniform character width, also called |
| It is used to enable information exchange | | | | 'fixed-pitch font.' Some of the fixed-pitch fonts |
| between computers. In general, the art term is | | | | include "FixedSys," "Courier," and "Monaco." |
| used to talk about text-based art. This style of | | | | Proportional fonts are not used to create ASCII |
| art was created basically, because printers in early | | | | Art, as the widths of the letters vary across |
| days did not have the ability to print graphics. | | | | fonts. This results in an artwork that appears |
| The Details | | | | skewed. |
| Every character has its own individual hexadecimal | | | | The Artworks |
| and binary number under ASCII. The coding | | | | ASCII art is more in use where text can be |
| scheme is such that it allots a numeric value to | | | | transmitted or printed easily in comparison to |
| numbers, alphabets, punctuation marks, and other | | | | graphics and in places where graphics cannot be |
| characters. The values of these characters are | | | | transmitted. It is also used to represent logos of |
| standardized. This in turn allows computers as well | | | | companies or products, for representing flow |
| as computer programs to share information. The | | | | charts. "0verkill" is an example of a 2D platform |
| character set comprises 128 characters that are | | | | shooter game that has been completely designed |
| standardized on almost all types of computers. | | | | in color ASCII art. Moreover, VLC media player |
| However, the characters used in ASCII Art are | | | | and MPlayer have the ability to display videos in |
| the 95 characters from #32 to #126. These 95 | | | | the form of ASCII Art. One of the simplest types |
| characters used are the ones present in any | | | | is the combination of two or more characters to |
| keyboard. Other symbols and characters are not | | | | express emotions in text format. These are called |
| standardized and are therefore, not | | | | 'smiley' or 'emoticons' in common parlance. It is |
| recommended for use in creating ASCII Art. | | | | also possible to create ASCII Art, with characters |
| Many people may not be able to view the | | | | in different colors. |