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TEXTMODE

Summary

Hi, I'm Polyducks - I'm a textmode artist from the UK. I get a lot of questions like "What is textmode art?" and "Where do I get started in textmode?", so I've put together a quick rundown. It'll help you understand what textmode is, why it was used in early computing and how you can get started, as well as some details on the sub categories of ANSI, ASCII and PETSCII.

Introduction to Textmode

Textmode is a broad term for art made with a monospaced font on a uniform grid. The term arose from a need to categorise art that didn't use a specific specification.

In the same way that 'tile art' encapsulates pixelart, mosaic, sprite art (and textmode), 'textmode' covers a great many different subcategories. Textmode encapsulates art like ASCII, ANSI, PETSCII and many others which have their own specific restrictions.

Old computers used to have various modes for displaying graphics - with hires modes for displaying pixelart with varying degrees of colour, and often a text mode for displaying uniform tiles of text characters in units of one character, one foreground colour and one background colour. This was beneficial because it required less RAM to display large, colourful graphics.

What is Textmode Art?

Textmode is a general term for tile art which is:

• Created from a fixed two colour tileset (usually a 1bit font)
• On a uniform grid
• With at most a single foreground colour per character
• With at most a single background colour per character

Notes

• Textmode is not limited to displaying only text. It is common for the font to include block characters, patterns, box drawing characters and specific icons like animals or objects.
• Textmode characters can sometimes be rotated or flipped, but this was not common for early computers. You should assume that most restrictions do not allow for rotated or flipped characters (i.e. PETSCII, ASCII, ANSI).
• Overwriting is an uncommon technique where characters can be layered one on top of another with transparency. This is supported in some editors in the form of layers and exists in some old hardware as a persistent frame buffer. As to whether or not the resulting screen 'is textmode' is a bit of a muddy topic, but the technique is within the realms of textmode. Generally this is considered "layered textmode" in the same way that ten cows are a herd of cows, not a cow.
• Most hardware bitmap fonts had 256 characters which is a useful guide for textmode fonts (but not always a hard limitation).
• Fonts don't have to be square.

Subcategories of textmode art:

PETSCII is a type of textmode for the commodore64

• It's restricted to a canvas of 40x25
• Only uses characters from either the upper or lowercase PETSCII font, but not both
• Characters can't be rotated or flipped
• All characters share one single, uniform background colour
• Uses the specific 16 colour Commodore 64 palette (as this is hardware based, there are a lot of variations of this palette, but generally they are all similar colours.)*

*The colour palette has been at the core of a long discussion among artists. The palette was heavily affected by the hardware it passed through - made doubly difficult by each Commodore 64 machine essentially having its own variation of the palette due to imperfections in manufacture. More information can be found on Pepto's website here, and this discussion on CSDB.

Common editors for PETSCII include Marq's PETSCII editor and Petmate. PLAYSCII and lvllvl can also produce PETSCII art and associated filetypes.

ANSI is textmode art with standards created for BBS servers

• It typically uses 256 characters exemplified by the font CP437
• Common aspect ratios for images are 80 characters wide and 25 tall - sometimes trimmming it to 79x23 to avoid display issues on BBS severs. It's common to see 'scrollers' which are 80 characters wide and unspecifically long.
• Uses the EGA palette
• Colours are restricted to specific foreground/background colour combinations - light on dark, dark on dark - unless iCE colours are enabled. iCE colours enable all colours to be paired.

Moebius and Pablodraw are popular choices for ANSI art. Both allow for multi-user canvases where artists can collaborate on ANSI art.

ASCII is a textmode format usually used in notepad files

• Usually monochrome (black on white for notepad, white on black for terminal)
• Uses a very specific range of characters, usually only those immediately visible on a QWERTY keyboard. ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange and outlines which characters are included within this range. (Full list here on Wikipedia)

There are a few great games that wonderfully exemplify ASCII art. Check out Candybox 2, Joan Jump and Stone Story.

Artist's notes

• Textmode art doesn't have a colour restriction beyond the two-per-character limitation, but often the best results come with a low colour count (2-16).
• The restriction of textmode is often what lends it its flavour. Having more or increasingly detailed characters in your font may not always give the best results.
• Tracing analogue images into textmode is often a supported feature in textmode editors, which allow for a transparent guide layer.
• The creation and refinement of analogue-to-textmode filters is an art in itself closer aligned to generative art than textmode art. Depending on the textmode restriction, communities may have strong opinions against using filters (specifically in ANSI where it has a bumpy cultural history). Premade filters are sometimes used as a starting point for further refinement into textmode art.

Other categories adjacent to textmode:

• If the tileset can be changed dynamically or made specifically to create a specific artwork then it's defined as colour restricted pixelart
• If there is no uniform grid but the art uses text characters then it's text art - an umbrella term for art made with text which also encompasses textmode art. This is often seen in typewriter art, non-monospaced text art, calligraphy or emoji art.
• If the tileset has more than two colours, it's a form of tile or sprite art (see also Gameboy or NES tile art)

Popular textmode editors:

• REXPaint by Josh Ge
• PLAYSCII by JP LeBreton
• lvllvl by James_
• NewPixelsApp (vectorised textmode aka "Vectmode" for mobile devices)
• Marq's PETSCII editor
• Petmate by Janne Hellsten
• Moebius is a textmode editor specifically for ANSI
• Pablodraw is another textmode editor for ANSI
• Notepad is probably still the best for ASCII, but for those that prefer drawing there is also ASCIIflow and 2010's JavE

Artists to look at

(In no particular order)

• Horsenburger (teletext)
• Illarterate (teletext)
• Adel Faure (ASCII)
• DataD00r (Generative Textmode)
• JellicaJake (multidiscipline textmode)
• goto80 (PETSCII and demoscene)
• Raquel Meyers (PETSCII)
• Polyducks (multidiscipline textmode)

See Also:

Brandon James Greer featured this page on his YouTube video "What is 'TEXT MODE' art?". He dives into his first piece and captures the process of refining from large blocks down into specific tiles. As an extra flourish he displays the art on a CRT monitor at the end. A very succinct and visual explanation, I'd recommend giving it a watch.