# How does someone do this with ASCII? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 7, 2003, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-do-this-with-ascii/200047 "2003-09-07T05:05:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![bernse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@bernse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bernse)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2003, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-do-this-with-ascii/200047/1 "2003-09-07T05:05:19Z")
[This](http://www.romanm.ch/ascii-movies/ascii-matrix1.htm) _Warning - 4MB Download - But cool!_ I’m curious as I’ve never seen anything like it before. Is there some sort of a converter that makes these? I think its pretty damn neat! ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2003, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-do-this-with-ascii/200047/2 "2003-09-07T05:25:12Z")
I don’t know how that specific one was created, but there are libraries for rendering video in ASCII. One of them is [aalib](http://aa-project.sourceforge.net/) which was used to render Doom and even create an X11 window manager. ---
**Author:** ![drewbert](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drewbert/32/15890_2.png) [@drewbert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewbert)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2003, 6:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-do-this-with-ascii/200047/3 "2003-09-07T06:58:23Z")
[ASCIIMoviePlayerSample](http://developer.apple.com/samplecode/Sample_Code/QuickTime/Goodies/ASCIIMoviePlayerSample.htm) If you’ve got Mac OS X, and have installed the Developer Tools, you can use this app to view movies and pictures as ASCII in the Terminal. Works on anything QuickTime Player can open. ---
**Author:** ![culov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e79b87/32.png) [@culov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/culov)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2003, 7:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-do-this-with-ascii/200047/4 "2003-09-07T07:09:08Z")
Chances are you got that from fark and i thought i saw someone explain it today. Anyways, its actually really simple. It has to do with breaking every part of the picture into squares, and assigning each range of brightness to a specific character. Just write a program to do that for hundreds of pictures and you can have a movie. Of course ive simplified the process a lot, but thats pretty much all it is. ---
**Author:** ![DarrenS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/977dab/32.png) [@DarrenS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DarrenS)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2003, 9:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-do-this-with-ascii/200047/5 "2003-09-07T09:39:48Z")
Is that the same technique used for making those “macro mosaic” pictures, where a huge color picture is actually composed of thousands of little tiny color pictures, with each tiny picture has just the right balance of color to act as a “pixel” of the correct hue? ---
**Author:** ![bernse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@bernse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bernse)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2003, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-do-this-with-ascii/200047/6 "2003-09-07T17:04:02Z")
Thanks for the responses! **culov** , I’ve never been to fark. ---
**Author:** ![rjk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ed655f/32.png) [@rjk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjk)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2003, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-do-this-with-ascii/200047/7 "2003-09-07T17:22:57Z")
Yes, **DarrenS** , it’s just the same, except that there needs to be a big library of micro-pics, since we need to match colour as well as brightness. There’s software around to do it automatically. ---
**Author:** ![Terminus\_Est](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terminus_est/32/3087_2.png) [@Terminus\_Est](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terminus_Est)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2003, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-do-this-with-ascii/200047/8 "2003-09-07T17:40:44Z")
As others have said, software can do all the rendering for you. So that’s not as impressive as this long-term project: [Star Wars in glorious Asciimation](http://www.asciimation.co.nz/), each frame lovingly detailed by hand.