Stick Boy's ANSI Art

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Stick Boy's ANSI Art

In the days when BBSs were prevalent and thriving, before the WWW revolution, for a few of my high school years I tried to make ANSI and RIP art. I was a member of the UNiCoRN/iLLUSiON/Empire and of the Shiver/Saga art groups, using the handle of "KillRaven." I was never very good, and as time passed I became less and less productive due to laziness and schoolwork. (... but mostly due to the laziness.) Ah, those were the days.

For anyone unfamiliar with ANSI art, it was a text-based medium, similar to ASCII art, but ANSI had 16 colors and utilized extended ASCII characters. Since ANSIs were text-based, they were often compact, a necessity in the days of 2400 bps modems.

And as with most text-based media, ANSIs were created character by character in a program not too different from a text editor. And yes, we anti-aliased them by hand.

For more information, check out ACiD's introduction to ANSI, RIP, and the "BBS scene."

Here are the collections of the works I attempted in this medium, along with a gallery of most of my better pieces. I converted the showcased images below to PNG images for viewing convenience. To view the original ANSI and RIP files from the collections, a special ANSI/RIP viewer is required. A viewer for DOS is available from ACiD Productions.

Click on a thumbnail to view a larger version of the image.

1993

kr-ans93.zip (62k)

	The Underworld (14k PNG) (1993-07-21) My first "shaded" ANSI. I think this is one of the best hands I've ever done in any medium. Everyone who sees this inevitably asks me, "What's that it's holding?" Beats me.
	The Nevada Testing Grounds (11k PNG) (1993-08-28) My first swipe from a comic book. Most ANSI artists based their pieces on comic book art. This pic is taken from the cover of The Incredible Hulk #277 by Dale Keown.
	Banned in the USA (23k PNG) (1993-10-05) Many newbie artists go through a phase of "over-shading," and I was no exception. I'm still pretty pleased with how this came out, even though the proportions turned out to be off. This pic was taken from the cover of Lobo #1 by Simon Bisley.

1994

kr-ans94.zip (31k)

	Psycho City #1 (6k PNG) (1994-08-22) This ANSI became the login screen to Psycho City, an art board I frequently called. I eventually became the board's co-sysop. This pic was based on the cover to The Mask trade-paperback by Doug Mahnke.
	Evil Intentions #1 (15k PNG) (1994-10-22) Finally, an almost-decent pic with an almost-decent logo! By the way, that's supposed to be blood dripping from the melting candle. (Huh?)
	The Shadow BBS (7k PNG) (1994-11-29) This is one of my favorite pieces, made for my friend Mitchell's non-existent BBS. One of the reasons I like this one so much is because of the joke, though I doubt many people understood it (if they could even read it).

1995

kr-ans95.zip (38k)

	Psycho City #5 (6k PNG) (1995-04-22) One of numerous logos I made for the Psycho City BBS.
	Shiver (5k PNG) (1995-06-27) A promotional ANSI I made for Shiver, the art group I was in at the time. Shortly after I made this, Shiver transformed into Saga.
	Saga (4k PNG) (1995-07-31) I really liked this logo, though I guess the people running Saga didn't, since it never got released with any of its art-packs. I liked reusing the same basic character four times, and not just because it meant less work for me.
	Stat Screen #4 (5k PNG) (1995-07-06) Another one of my favorite pieces. I like this one because it's so small.
	Evil Intentions #2 (5k PNG) (1995-08-20) A logo for Evil Intentions, another art board I frequented. I tried to imitate "Hannibal Lecter's" style, though I definitely did not do it justice. (Hannibal Lecter was one of the best ANSI logo artists around.) I still like how this turned out, though most people probably wouldn't appreciate it.
	Elvis (6k PNG) (1995-08-25) This wasn't supposed to be Elvis. Originally it was intended to be a thug in a wife-beater named "Bruno." It happened to turn out looking sort of Elvis-y, though, so I added the (totally lame) line at the bottom. (And no, I'm not an Elvis fan.)
	Demon (11k PNG) (1995-12-10) A demon head I started but never got around to finishing. This is based on a doodle I dubbed "Mr. AIME," who's supposed to be evil incarnate. Of course, Mr. AIME was secretely just an apprentice to his master, Darth USAMO. (The AIME and USAMO are math competitions.)