The Art of the BBS World

The text written below comes from a page on BBS Culture from my web site, but I figured I'd post it here for those who are interested in old school digital artforms during the reign of the Bulletin Board System.

These forms of art are still being done today, and it is just amazing what people can do. They literally hand type out each character. That image you see above? Done character by character... by hand.

---

Several really fun and interesting art styles came out of the BBS world. One of them which I’m sure you have used/seen/heard about is ASCII art which has its roots in typewriter art that goes back as early as 1898. With the character sets available at the time of BBSs such as CP437 and the Amiga Topaz, artists were able to generate amazing looking art using just those limited set of characters.

CP437 ASCII & Topaz

Here is an example of it for CP437 by one of my favorite artists Abstrakt: https://16colo.rs/artist/abstrakt

Here is an example of it for Amiga Topaz by one of my favorite artists aNACHRONiST: https://16colo.rs/artist/anachronist

Block / High ASCII Style

There was also a part of the CP437 code page that contained block type characters and other symbols which could be used along with ANSI (allowed terminals to display colors and text-based graphics). Initially there were only 16 colors to choose from, and so artists had to get really creative with techniques to introduce shading and the appearance of other colors in their artwork.

Here is an example of it from one of my favorite artists named Tainted: https://16colo.rs/artist/tainted

Art Group Packs

Another interesting art style that came out of the BBS world was the use of “Pack Releases” which were collections of art that were released by artists to the public. These packs were often released in a “demo” format which was a small program that would display the art in a looping animation. These demos were often used to show off the art to other artists and to get feedback on the art.

Here is an example of a pack release by one of my favorite groups called Fire: https://16colo.rs/pack/fire-46