6 ms·

Textart.sh

250 points by bicebird 3y ago

bicebird 3y ago
Found the site when looking for ascii art to add to a server motd and wondered if anyone had any information about it? All I can find when searching is references to people using it in projects, but no background or community. Has a pretty amazing number of categories / artworks, and some of them are genuinely beautiful. It feels very old internet but the domain was registered in 2018, although could have been migrated? Almost happy for it to stay a mystery but on the off chance the maintainer(s) see this thank you for adding a bit of brightness to the world :)
- qup 3y ago
  Some of the entries I ran across made me feel like it was automated. They weren't really art, they were photos with words in them etc. I think it's scraping images somewhere and processing them automatically.
  - SuperNinKenDo 3y ago
    There's certainly some automated conversiom happening at some point in the process, either it's scraping resources that include automated renders, or else it's doing them itself. Lots of unreadable or very suboptimally rendered text within images that you just wouldn't do like that even if you were copying from an existing image. Makes me wonder if the upvote/downvote mechanism is feeding into some machine learning. However, some images do convert pretty well, and if the up/down voting mechanism reflects in what gets listed on what order, then it could become a cool little resource. Kinda ruins the old-internet charm of the text art though.
    - vages 3y ago
      The entries seem to go on forever, although with some repetition. No way the images could be handmade.
      - debesyla 3y ago
        And some of the entries even have "shutterstock" watermark on top, like in the https://textart.sh/topic/gasoline https://textart.sh/topic/gasoline category.
rameshj87 3y ago
[flagged]
ssl-3 3y ago
Nice, but since each pixel consists of a solid-filled greyscale rectangle (or emojis, I guess?) and doesn't take advantage of the shapes of characters, the resolution seems limited compared to the ASCII art of yore (or even the output of aalib). It also doesn't have any Dickbutt images and this is a crime against Dickbutt.
- technophiliac 3y ago
  No goatse, either :(
  - nurettin 3y ago
    I just imagined the goatse guy aging 20 years. How would he hold his crap? Would he ever live that long? Questions for the 40 year olds.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- kang 3y ago
  9th image on topic peen is currently dickbutt
gmerc 3y ago
I was expecting AI but was positively surprised
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
charcircuit 3y ago
These are all machines generated from normal photos without any regard if the output looks good. You can even see shutterstock watermarks in some. Take a look at a site like https://aahub.org/ https://aahub.org/ if you want to see some examples of proper text art.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
russfink 3y ago
What is the license on any of these?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
Every one I tried returned a disclaimer something like, "While technically this is not [whatever] ASCII art because it uses Unicode characters ..." This suggests some folks are expecting ASCII art. Perhaps this website should be "unicodeart.sh" instead "textart.sh"
- amelius 3y ago
  Doesn't seem to use the full unicode set either.
DanAtC 3y ago
http://www.asciiartfarts.com/keyword.html http://www.asciiartfarts.com/keyword.html
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
WaffleIronMaker 3y ago
Here's a more curated and human-made ASCII version: https://ascii.co.uk/art https://ascii.co.uk/art
- nurettin 3y ago
  https://ascii.co.uk/art/earth https://ascii.co.uk/art/earth that was amazing, thank you
- Juraph 3y ago
  THIS is the kind of thing I was expecting when I clicked on the parent link, ASCII art, instead of computer converted images. While there is nothing wrong with rasterising an image to ASCII, there is something I really love about the hand drawn stuff. Especially the early ones where the 'canvas' size was so limited, it forced such creativity.
methou 3y ago
Back in 2000s when telnet BBS' are huge, you can fit in a lot of things in a 80x24 screen. Sadly they are slowly dying out. I'm not sure how many of them are left in the English world, but at least in the Chinese world ptt.cc is still alive. Here's an example of experience with ASCIIArt/ANSIArt[0], when using telnet based forums: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-ohV6KZsQo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-ohV6KZsQo There's also a ANSIArt version of star war, https://www.asciimation.co.nz/ https://www.asciimation.co.nz/ , it used to be a telnet site, but nowadays no one even have the binary to telnet from.
skenderbeu 3y ago
We need an LLM model for this.
npilk 3y ago
These must be computer-generated - the third image under 'goose' has a Shutterstock watermark (oops): https://textart.sh/topic/goose https://textart.sh/topic/goose
hombre_fatal 3y ago
this site really needs to prune its image-to-text generated crap.
warthog 3y ago
This is just amazing - wondering how you made it happen

250 points by bicebird 3y ago

Found the site when looking for ascii art to add to a server motd and wondered if anyone had any information about it? All I can find when searching is references to people using it in projects, but no background or community. Has a pretty amazing number of categories / artworks, and some of them are genuinely beautiful. It feels very old internet but the domain was registered in 2018, although could have been migrated? Almost happy for it to stay a mystery but on the off chance the maintainer(s) see this thank you for adding a bit of brightness to the world :)

qup 3y ago
Some of the entries I ran across made me feel like it was automated. They weren't really art, they were photos with words in them etc. I think it's scraping images somewhere and processing them automatically.
- SuperNinKenDo 3y ago
  There's certainly some automated conversiom happening at some point in the process, either it's scraping resources that include automated renders, or else it's doing them itself. Lots of unreadable or very suboptimally rendered text within images that you just wouldn't do like that even if you were copying from an existing image. Makes me wonder if the upvote/downvote mechanism is feeding into some machine learning. However, some images do convert pretty well, and if the up/down voting mechanism reflects in what gets listed on what order, then it could become a cool little resource. Kinda ruins the old-internet charm of the text art though.
  - vages 3y ago
    The entries seem to go on forever, although with some repetition. No way the images could be handmade.
    - debesyla 3y ago
      And some of the entries even have "shutterstock" watermark on top, like in the https://textart.sh/topic/gasoline https://textart.sh/topic/gasoline category.

rameshj87 3y ago

[flagged]

ssl-3 3y ago

Nice, but since each pixel consists of a solid-filled greyscale rectangle (or emojis, I guess?) and doesn't take advantage of the shapes of characters, the resolution seems limited compared to the ASCII art of yore (or even the output of aalib). It also doesn't have any Dickbutt images and this is a crime against Dickbutt.

technophiliac 3y ago
No goatse, either :(
- nurettin 3y ago
  I just imagined the goatse guy aging 20 years. How would he hold his crap? Would he ever live that long? Questions for the 40 year olds.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
kang 3y ago
9th image on topic peen is currently dickbutt

gmerc 3y ago

I was expecting AI but was positively surprised

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

charcircuit 3y ago

These are all machines generated from normal photos without any regard if the output looks good. You can even see shutterstock watermarks in some. Take a look at a site like https://aahub.org/ https://aahub.org/ if you want to see some examples of proper text art.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

russfink 3y ago

What is the license on any of these?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago

Every one I tried returned a disclaimer something like, "While technically this is not [whatever] ASCII art because it uses Unicode characters ..." This suggests some folks are expecting ASCII art. Perhaps this website should be "unicodeart.sh" instead "textart.sh"

amelius 3y ago
Doesn't seem to use the full unicode set either.

DanAtC 3y ago

http://www.asciiartfarts.com/keyword.html http://www.asciiartfarts.com/keyword.html

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

WaffleIronMaker 3y ago

Here's a more curated and human-made ASCII version: https://ascii.co.uk/art https://ascii.co.uk/art

nurettin 3y ago
https://ascii.co.uk/art/earth https://ascii.co.uk/art/earth that was amazing, thank you
Juraph 3y ago
THIS is the kind of thing I was expecting when I clicked on the parent link, ASCII art, instead of computer converted images. While there is nothing wrong with rasterising an image to ASCII, there is something I really love about the hand drawn stuff. Especially the early ones where the 'canvas' size was so limited, it forced such creativity.

methou 3y ago

Back in 2000s when telnet BBS' are huge, you can fit in a lot of things in a 80x24 screen. Sadly they are slowly dying out. I'm not sure how many of them are left in the English world, but at least in the Chinese world ptt.cc is still alive. Here's an example of experience with ASCIIArt/ANSIArt[0], when using telnet based forums: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-ohV6KZsQo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-ohV6KZsQo There's also a ANSIArt version of star war, https://www.asciimation.co.nz/ https://www.asciimation.co.nz/ , it used to be a telnet site, but nowadays no one even have the binary to telnet from.

skenderbeu 3y ago

We need an LLM model for this.

npilk 3y ago

These must be computer-generated - the third image under 'goose' has a Shutterstock watermark (oops): https://textart.sh/topic/goose https://textart.sh/topic/goose

hombre_fatal 3y ago

this site really needs to prune its image-to-text generated crap.

warthog 3y ago

This is just amazing - wondering how you made it happen