. lda : So you want to draw ANSi art, eh? Self-proclaimed terrible artist with no artistic abilities whatsoever? Well fix that! The plan for this tutorial is to get you drawing your first ANSi with some tips from me. Ill take you through from your first blocks, down to the final touches. Hopefully we can get this all done in one lesson. What do you Need? Youll need to open this file in your favourite ANSi editor. A couple of options are Moebius and PabloDraw but a DOS editor like ACiDraw, TheDraw or Empathy will work too. Im going to also assume that you know how to use your drawing program because we havent got time to get into that. We will be doing actual doodles. Id also like to recommend you listen to some of your favourite music. That always helps me get into a drawing trance but if youd like, silence also works well too. How Do I Draw? The first hurdle for anyone to draw, is how to start. Youve got a blank canvas in front of you and option paralysis. You could take any number of steps first. Its quite daunting, but its actually fairly simple. You just need to remember a few things: * You will likely never draw something perfect right off the bat. Dont expect perfection at first. * Start simple, fix glaring issues, add more, fix, repeat! Seems easy enough, right? Alright, lets get started. First Step - Start Simple Were going to be drawing skulls today because they are the epitome of cool and I think it leaves a wide playground for creative artists to shine. First, we start with a rough outline of our subject in question. Below, Ive given you space for your skull and an example of my own beside yours. Feel free to sketch any skull that comes to mind. Does it have to look exactly like mine? No. Does it have to look like a perfect sketch? No, it can be anything from memory or just a plain ol human skull. Youre going to want to copy and paste it onto the next step canvas when youre completely finished. Remember that it can be really rough and unfinished!
Second Step - Refine Got your skull copied? Alright, paste it down, alongside mine and we can get to work on the next step. You will need to refine the outline. Our current outlines are pretty rough so its best if we get the shape of our skull all worked out now before we carry on. Something so rough just wont do for our ANSi masterpiece, right? Youll want to use the various half blocks the horizontal AND thin vertical ones! to create gentle curves where there needs to be gentle curves and sharp corners where there should be sharp corners. Ive given you an example alongside the space for you to work your magic on your skull that you should have there now.
Third Step - The Colour and the Skull Now, heres where Id start thinking about colours for our picture. What will the skull mostly be coloured? Pristine white? Yellow and grungy? Blood-covered or crimson? Green Jade? You decide for your own skull. For my own, Ive decided to go with a plain grey which will utilize the white for highlights and dark grey for the shadows. Like me, you should be thinking about your own highlight and shadow colours here, especially if you intend on keeping your piece without the use of iCE colours bright foreground colours clashing with bright foreground colours. Remember to copy your skull when youre done this step and then contine on.
Fourth Step - Shadows Follow Us Wherever We Go Now, if you imagine your skull in a three dimensional space, with a single light source, youd likely imagine some sort of shadows on it. We need to decide Where our light source is and draw shadows recall your choice of shadow colour in the previous step. Just keep it simple with blobs of shade here and there. You can add few shadows for a well lit skull or many shadows for a dimly lit one. You might want to ask yourself questions like: is your skull lit on the bottom like its on the pedestal of a museum? Or is it lit above by the sun? Maybe a light source to the side like a setting sun? You get to decide all this for your own picture. Do I need to tell you to copy your skull drawing when youre done here?... Because you should!
Fifth Step - Highlights Reel On the other side of shadows, are the highlights. These are where the object reflects much of the light source back to the viewer. You can think of it in terms of a gradient like this: Nothing -- Shadow ---- Normal Object --- Highlight Remember your light source and think about where you would see a brighter spot on your object from this light. Copy your skull when youre finished.
Step Six - Final Touches Youll probably look at your skull and wonder things like: Where did everything go so wrong? or, Why doesnt mine look as good as yours? Well, get ready to fix all that. What dont you like about your skull? Whats the worst part about it to you? Does it have ugly buck teeth? Get rid of them! Does it look too rough? Refine that shape again and fix it! You can add shading characters here if youd like to get that ANSi aesthetic too! I will be adding shading characters sparingly and blending in my shadows and highlights a little more.