Frequently Asked Questions
about ASCII

Countless people have asked:
"How do you make ASCII Art?"

I spent a year in isolation with a little known order of ASCII Monks who live in solitude and pass on the ancient art of ASCII from generation to generation. I've been sworn to secrecy as to the methods used to create the complex keyboard character images that you see on this site.

Quite a few people have asked:
"Don't you use just a program?"

Well it would be ridiculous to believe that I create the portraits on this site with nothing but my fingers and keyboard. There are other forces at work.

A handful people have said:
"Your site is crap. Anyone can do what you're doing".

Yes, but not quite as well.

Wes J. asks
"How do you EXACTLY do it?"

I'm not going to exactly say. There's more to it then just feeding a photo into a program. Creative genius, imagination, technical skill and a lot of luck all played a part in fine tuning the results. Now I can do it effortlessly and almost mindlessly with a 90% success rate for quality.

Scott D. asks
"How do I go about printing images out, so I can put them on my fridge? When I try to, it breaks up the image and it comes out looking all funky. I tried printing it out directly from the website, as well as copying it and pasting into MS Word. Please don't tell me I'd need one of those ancient dot matrix printers that prints out banners. I've got a huge 23" plasma monitor and they look really good on it, but I'd like to be able to print it out somehow, to where I can fit a whole image on one page, like a portrait."

To print you need to copy and paste the text into MS Word and then change the text to Courier New at 4 or 5 points. Also if you make the page margins smaller it will allow you a little more room.

Though Word does print a little funny when it comes to ASCII Art. Play around with it a bit and even try Notepad. Copy and paste, set it at Courier New 4 or 5 point and give that a go.

And send me a photo of your fridge with the new works of art on it :)

Scott D. asks
"What exactly do you mean by 4 or 5 point? Is that the size?

'Points' are the sizes for fonts. The 8 means it's set at '8 point'.

Scott D. asks
"I set it to courier new, but the smallest it lets me use is size 8."

8 point is the smallest default. I assume they figure any smaller than that and you can't properly read it. Which is true. But we need it smaller to properly view the ASCII Art on the page.

So you'll have to 'force' it to do 5. Which isn't as hard as it sounds.

Just highlight the number in the box and type in the number 5.

Then hit OK.

L.M. of an undisclosed location asks:
I just tried to cut and paste some ASCII onto the poster "in Adobe Photoshop" as a background but it will not paste. Do you have any suggestions?

" Click and drag to select the text that makes the image.

" COPY.

" In Adobe Photoshop I assume you just went PASTE. It didn't seem to work for me either.

" What you should do is select the TEXT TOOL and then set the text to be COURIER NEW at 6 POINT.

" Next click on the top left hand corner and drag to the bottom left. The actual size of the box does not matter too much, just try and make it as big as you can. (Merely clicking the text tool in one place doesn't work, you need to do the click and drag method.)

" Now you will have a text box on the canvas. Do your PASTE now.

" Depending on the speed and power of your PC it may take a little time. Because we're talking about between 50,000 and 100,000 characters.

" You should see the 'image' on your canvas now.

" Change the size of the font to suit to fill the dimensions you have to work to. (the type of font is important, Courier New is a FIXED WIDTH FONT... only Fixed Width Fonts work for ASCII Art).

* The same instructions pretty much works with Macromedia Freehand, but you could get an error saying there's two much text. when this has happened i've copied and pasted in two chunks and then lined them back up in the program.

Tyra S. asks:
"Do you want to see the t-shirt I made from your ASCII?

I certainly do. take a photo of it. Preferably with yourself in it. And send it in. With your permission I'll post it for everyone else to see.

Go back to the homepage