State of the Art by aNACHRONiST/Void^Impure^Phenom
The Amiga isn't just a personal computer. It represents a mish-mash ofartists, musicians, coders, and misfits who have created a rich culture of art using a machine that was far ahead of its time. The demoscene in particular has been key in keeping the Amiga relevant and exciting even to those who never had the privilege of experiencing the “scene” in its heyday during the eighties and nineties. Today, fantastic art is still being created using Deluxe Paint and other Amiga programs and killer audio tracks are still released by clever MOD musicians. What is often overlooked is the thriving Amiga text art community and its contribution not only to the Amiga scene as a whole but art and design in general.
. .
. .
_ __|__________________________________________________|__ _
||||¦::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::· ·::¦|
||||¦:. ______________________________________]\ ·¦|
|||¦¦:· > __> __> __ > __> __> :|
||¦¦:· / /¯¯ / /¯¯ / / :¦|
|¦::· / / / / / __/ ::¦|
|::· /¯¯ / / / / / ::¦||
|:: < < < of the<_______< < ::¦|||
|::: \[¯¯¯¯¯¯>¯¯¯¯¯¯¯> > __>¯¯¯¯¯¯¬::¦||||
|¦:::. .::: / ¯¯ / ¯¯ /¯¯ / ::::::::¦|||||
||¦¦:::::: / / _/ / :::¦¦¦¦¦¦¦|||||
|||¦¦¦¦:: / / / / ::¦¦¦|||||||||||
||||||¦: < < / < < ::¦¦|||T¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ ¯
||||||¦:: \[¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¬ :¦||||| » aNSt
||||||¦¦::. .::::::::::::::::::::::::¦||||| 2019 «
¯ ¯¯T¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯T
· ·
· ·
The proliferation of text art coincided directly with the rise and fallof bulletin board system usage. BBSes, with the exception of those using
Amiga’s Skypix or the short-lived latecomer Remote Imaging Protocol
(RIP graphics), can only output text. Innovative artists arranged text
characters like puzzle pieces to create larger works. The most popular form
of this utilizes IBM’s font Codepage 437 and features images and
multi-character fonts created from shaded and non-shaded “blocks” that are
part of the character set. This is what is popularly known by the misnomer
“ANSI art”. The Amiga uses a different font: Topaz. This font lacks the
shaded block style characters of CP437, but the characters that are
included connect in ways that CP437 does not. This is most noticable
when using forward / and backward \ slashes. This enables Amiga text
artists to make dynamic shapes and fonts that would look terrible in CP437.
This style of “line art” as it was called was featured heavily in BBS
packages such as the very popular Ami Express. Soon, another method of
using characters became popular in both the Amiga and PC scene. Instead of
using single characters to draw lines and patterns, characters were
clustered en masse like large pixels. This style is what is generated when
one uses any image-to-ASCII tool. While it is a style that predates line
art, it was new to the teenage artists of the day. So this style became
known as “Newschool” while line art became known as “Oldschool”.
The characters of Topaz and their angles lend a very distinctappearance to the art created with them. One can see not only fonts used in
our present day that are inspired by the styles created in the Amiga scene
but also composition in graphic design that was pioneered with them. Amiga
text art and techniques were in the collective consciousness of artists
worldwide as the personal computer came to be used everywhere in art and
design. It’s only natural that we still perceive echoes of this now.
Keeping this very brief overview in mind, what is the state of Amigatext art now? What is happening currently? While there were many groups of
Amiga text artists back up until the early 2000s, nowadays there is one main
group: iMPUREASCII1940, otherwise known simply as iMPURE. This is the art
group that I belong to. iMPURE have been active for quite some time and have
just released our 74th pack(packs are collections of art released by an
artist or art group) as of this article. Another group known as BREAK! that
was very well known for their impressive Newschool designs have not been
active in quite some time. There are rumors of one last pack to be released,
but it has not materialized as of the writing of this article. The artists
of iMPURE have been very active in the various competitions, or “compos”,
at demo parties over the years. If there is a competition featuring ASCII or
Amiga ASCII(Topaz), then you can be sure iMPURE have a very large presence
indeed. The demo parties Evoke and Revision have compos for this every year
that draw fierce and healthy competition. Revision often mashes together all
the varied forms of text art into one competition while Evoke, much more
sensibly, divides them into proper categories. I had the honor of winning
first place at Evoke 2018 last year, while 2019’s deserving first place
winner was Hellbeard, also of iMPURE. It is rare that Amiga text art gets
press outside of demo party compos. However, 2019 witnessed a few notable
events: Master Boot Record, the chiptune and heavy metal artist as well as
writer of the upcoming cyberpunk adventure game VirtuaVerse commisioned and
used a new MBR logo created in Topaz. Linux Journal held a text art
competition for the cover of its then-upcoming July 2019 issue that focused
on the command line. Word of the contest spread like wildfire in the scene
and many submissions were made. In the end, all top three places all came
from one group: iMPURE. It’s a shame that the magazine eventually went under,
yet another sign of the times for print. Droidcon Toronto used Amiga Topaz
art for its logo this year. It says something that the best text art as
judged by the world’s longest running Linux magazine and the text art chosen
as a logo by the world’s largest Android convention were both drawn in
Amiga’s system font.
There has been a surge of interest in BBSes recently as a new generationdiscovers this alternative method of electronic interaction. Becoming
disillusioned with social media and the web, many people are searching for
the more personal environment that BBSes offer. Media-savvy groups such as
ArakNet are exposing the BBS and text art scene to new audiences through a
variety of modern mediums. As one long-time sysop once told me, “Browsing the
internet is like walking into a raging party where everyone is yelling.
Visiting a BBS is like being invited into a man’s livingroom.”. With this
recent uptick in callers, new life has been breathed into the Amiga BBS scene
in particular. New Amiga C-NET boards are popping up left and right.
Ami Express has a new version that was released this year. Zeus has a new
version available. New applications and games are being created for the first
time in many years. Of particular interest to Amiga users and text art lovers
is a backport of the font Amiga Topaz 1200 Plus, also known as Amiga Topaz 2+.
This font features extra pixels to connect the characters seamlessly, greatly
improving the appearance of art created with the font. It is the font of
choice for Amiga text art compos. Until now, this font has ironically been
available for pretty much every platform other than Amiga. Late last year I
was drawing art for James Jacobs of Amigan Software’s Tunnels & Trolls
conversion and requested an Amiga font version of Topaz 1200 Plus. He came
through brilliantly and now Amiga terminal users and art fans everywhere can
now use it in their system and BBS terminals. While not available on Aminet,
you can get it from aBSiNTHE BBS(address at end of article), the badass Amiga
board I run that offers Topaz line art, new games and applications, and many
features not found elsewhere. Yeah, it’s a shameless plug- check it out
anyway 😉
The future is bright. New artists are starting to create Amiga text artand veteran artists are reappearing. Modern tools are available such as
Pablodraw. iMPURE is very active. Amiga text art at demo parties continue to
be popular. The Amiga text art scene is healthy, engaged, and not going
anywhere any time soon. Stop by the iMPURE site at: https://impure.nl/ or
drop by aBSiNTHE to view or download the latest art releases from iMPURE and
others. The Sixteen Colors ANSI Art and ASCII Art Archive at:
https://16colo.rs/ and https://www.facebook.com/sixteencolors is a fantastic
resource for the entire text art scene and is enthusiastically maintained.
If you are curious about learning to draw Amiga text art, feel free todrop by the iMPURE IRC channel #IMPURE on EFNET. We love to help new artists.
Amiga Forever,
aNACHRONiST^VOiD^iMPURE^PHENOM
+o aBSiNTHE BBS | absinthebbs.net:1940
Back to Versus #9 (content), Versus (all issues), Diskmags (main page), Amiga online magazines (home)
