ASCII art

(graphics)(Or "character graphics", "ASCII graphics") Thefine art of drawing diagrams using the ASCII character set(mainly "|-/\\+").

See also boxology. Here is a serious example:

o----)||(--+--||-+ | +-\\/\\/-+--o - TC N )||( | | | | PE )||( +-->|-+--)---+--)|--+-o U)||( | | | GND To----)||(--+--|
A power supply consisting of a full wave rectifiercircuit feeding a capacitor input filter circuit

Figure 1.

And here are some very silly examples:

|\\/\\/\\/| ____/| ___ |\\_/| ___| | \\ o.O| ACK! / \\_ |` '| _/ | | =(_)= THPHTH! / \\/ \\/ | (o)(o) U / C _) (__) \\/\\/\\/\\ _____ /\\/\\/\\/| ,___| (oo) \\/ \\/| / \\/-------\\ U (__)/____\\ || | \\ /---V `v'- oo )/ \\ ||---W|| * * |--| || |`. |_///-o-\\____---=======---____====___\\ /.. ..\\ /___==== Klingons rule OK!// ---\\__O__/--- \\\\_\\ /_/

_______...---'-----`---...___===============================,----------------._/' `---..._______...---'(_______________||_) . . ,--'/ /.---' `/'--------_- - - - - _/`--------'

Figure 2.

There is an important subgenre of ASCII art that puns on thestandard character names in the fashion of a rebus.

+--------------------------------------------------------+| ^^^^^^^^^^^^ || ^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^ || ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ || ^^^^^^^ B ^^^^^^^^^ || ^^^^^^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ |+--------------------------------------------------------+"A Bee in the Carrot Patch"

Figure 3.

Within humorous ASCII art, there is, for some reason, anentire flourishing subgenre of pictures of silly cows. One isshown in Figure 2; here are three more:

(__) (__) (__)(\\/) ($$) (**)/-------\\/ /-------\\/ /-------\\// | 666 || / |=====|| / | ||* ||----|| * ||----|| * ||----||~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~Satanic cow This cow is a Yuppie Cow in love

Figure 4.

http://gagme.wwa.com/~boba/scarecrow.html.

ASCII art

Pictures created with normal text characters. ASCII art had its heyday in the 1980s when character-based displays were the norm. However, starting in the mid-1990s and for nearly a decade, Joan Stark made hundreds of ASCII art images. She also developed a tutorial to help people create their own. See GIFSCII, electronic art, microchip art and software art.

ASCII ART

Although simple, ASCII art can be very imaginative as in this example. (Image courtesy of Joan G. Stark.)