p r o d u c t i o n s A A A ax rmrs ice Aces of ANSi Art ++----------------------++ Even beginnings have a beginning here to begin Aces of ANSi Art was an alliance of artists who specialized in one thing ANSI Although their specific date of birth is not known it is approximated to have been some time late in the year of 1989 Aces existed in one form or another from 1989 - 1991 Formed by two people Zyphril and Chips Ahoy of San Jose California Aces of ANSi Art ( A A A ) was indisputably the first underground or elite ANSI group and possibly the first organization of ANSI artists ever assembled Their motives for the creation of this group were simple put out some cool artwork help out sysops and get name-brand recognition Strength in numbers was realized In September of 1990 several key players from the group left to form one of their own This dealt a devastating blow to Aces and for several months after it was unclear whether or not the group had seen it s last days Something happened a local artist by the name of Mondoman came aboard releasing a fury of ANSIs and arguably some of the best ANSI animations seen in A A A New life was breathed into the group attracting others once more The selection of ANSI artwork included in this archive while authorized is partial This is a modest representation of what was drawn by artists of this era but is by no means definitive While there are 84 ANSIs and 2 executable ANSI loaders included much artwork is missing from the likes of Chips Ahoy Icepirate The Beholder even myself You will find that each of the artists represented have a distinctive style Many of these ANSIs are animated or make creative use of the blinking attributes Most Windows based viewers show only the final page of an animated ANSI effectively stripping out all the animated action preceding the last screen and also tend to disable the blinking attribute all together It is recommended that a capable viewer such as ACiD View 4 36f (included) be used in full-screen text-mode for proper display By the time A A A had faded away so many events which would change the face of the art scene had yet to happen There were no VGANS collages of ANSI or decent ANSI viewers let alone one which supported real-time VGA-mode down-scaled browsing of an ANSI To display an ANSI one would type it from DOS or view it the way it was meant to while connected to another BBS To imagine what something might look like in VGA mode the only thing one could do was to distance themselves as far away as possible from their monitor and use some imagination one screen-full at a time No SAUCE descriptions to declare the title author and organization to identify your artwork just eight mighty characters prepending the de facto file extension of dot A-N-S Most importantly in the context of this writing the concept of an artpack let alone an artpack comprised of new artwork released on a monthly basis had yet to be seen Relatively speaking this is the most comprehensive collection of artwork by Aces in circulation and the one and only pack to stand out proudly in our 1991 directory on the ACiD Artpacks Archive ftp ftp artpacks acid org pub artpacks artpacks 1991 These ANSIs represent a sign of the times but mean a lot to me in other ways ACiD s lineage traces directly back to Aces of ANSi Art If it weren t for that precursory inspiration in 1990 I can only imagine how different things would be today I owe a great many thanks to many people who assisted in one way or another with the assemblage of this set Especially when you take in to consideration that these files are now teenagers themselves Sources included - Private collection by Mondoman (former A A A and ACiD Artist) - AAA ZIP a very small and unauthorized sampler released by Cavalier (former CCi Net administrator and RNDserv bot operator on the #ANSI of yore) - ACID ZIP (also known as ACID1 ZIP ACID-1 ZIP) an unofficial release of early ACiD and AAA artwork by an anonymous individual The accompanying FILE_ID DIZ still makes me cringe to this day - Hacker Chronicles CD-ROM P-80 International Information Systems - Jason Scott (Sketch the Cow) & textfiles com - My own personal collection of 5 25 & 3 5 diskettes miraculously still intact and readable! Thank you for reading Christian Wirth aka RaD Man (mailto radman@acid org) Senior Advisor and Founder ACiD Productions Post Office Box 24523 fax 775 854 6161 San Jose CA 95154-4523 http www acid org U S A aim goim screenname=ACiD+Productions