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::|CONTENTS

1. iCE colors vs. blinking text
2. Tools
3. See Also

ANSI art is a text art form based on MS-DOS's code page 437 and ANSI.SYS. Similar to ASCII art, it's origins can be tracked to the history of computing: in ANSI's case, its development and relevance among computer users primarily coincided with the BBS scene's rise and fall.

It is comprised of a character sheet with a total 256 character count. It also uses 16 text colors and between 8 and 16 background colors, depending on which coloring standard is being used. The de facto file format used for ANSI Art is .ans.

iCE colors vs. blinking text

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The original ANSI specification has 16 foreground colors but only 8 background colors, with the last bit being used for blinking (strobing of certain characters with a length of ~1 second). However, there is an option in some editors and viewers to enable "iCE colors", a semi-unofficial standard created by art group iCE. Enabling iCE colors allows you to use all 16 colors for the background, at the cost of disabling blinking text. Note that not all viewers support iCE colors.

Tools

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GUI-based PC's (windows, mac, linux)
- PabloDraw

- what appears to be the most used ANSI editor today. Less resource intensive.
- Moebius

- similar to PabloDraw, more focused on aesthetics.

DOS
- ACiDDraw

- created and used by the ANSI group ACiD.
- The Draw

- THE original DOS user's ANSI editor.

Tools
- ansiart2utf8

- a Linux tool that does exactly what its name says.

See Also

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Wikipedia article

16colo.rs

(formerly Sixteen Colors) - an ANSI art archive
Roy/SAC's ASCII Art Academy

- resources & tutorials for making 7- and 8-bit ASCII art, as well as ANSI art
cp437

- wiki article about higher order ascii characters used in ANSI art