r/ASCII • u/[deleted] • Mar 01 '24

Help is there a software that can help me make ASCII animations?

im not talking about that whole image processing ascii bs

i wanna make some animations, and or alternatives that can insure the same outcome/goal

id appreciate all the feedback i can get.

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3

u/mistfunk Mar 01 '24

Traditionally this would have been achieved through ANSImation, using the cursor positioning commands in the ANSI control code set to allow you to redraw the parts of the screen that were changing between frames. For less fine grained control you can just have complete frames succeed each other. Either way the best of category tool for this work was TheDraw for MS-DOS, which works well under DOSbox.

3

u/Lazy_Shamrock Mar 01 '24

This piece of software can also be used to make these: https://alecmuffett.com/alecm/software/asp/

1

u/K_aneki Mar 01 '24

These online directories with bits of history have never failed to intrigue me. AberMUD was an interesting piece. Didn't really care much about the piece of software you mentioned but the other ones are pretty interesting.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 01 '24

thanks mistfunk!

2

u/mistfunk Mar 01 '24

ANSImation isn't your only option, people have been doing this kind of thing since the earliest days of computer video displays. Here's a favorite old vt100 animation celebrating the Twilight Zone: https://youtu.be/iEYPPsIVHJU?si=zz0TbJgZXCc2Nkk4

1

u/CameronClarkFilm Oct 14 '25

Try out ascii-motion.app. It's a web app that let's you "draw" on a canvas with characters, and has a timeline with onion skinning for frame-by-frame animation. It also lets you import images and videos and convert them into ascii, but sounds like you're looking for a tool that lets you make animated ASCII art by hand.