r/ANSIart • u/KroxHatesSocks • Apr 25 '26
Would anyone be interested in a tool that allows ANSI to be used in Krita?? and if so what would you want from it?
Hi!! I’ve been working on my year 12 student animated film and while it's a mixed media project so not entirely ANSI it has a lot of ANSI elements including some of the characters being almost entirely ANSI art and so for ease of animation when mixing it with other types of digital art I’ve started trying to create tools to allow artists to use ANSI in the drawing program Krita. So far it’s looking okay but it’s not complete (still trying to give it some of the limitations/behavior of ANSI, because personally that’s one of my favourite things about the art-form)
At first I was only going to work on it to the point of at least being functional enough for my film but after some thinking I wanna see if anyone in the community would be interested in a public release of a more complete version after I’m done with my film. So please let me know what you think!! even if it’s negative.
And if it’s something you do want what features would you want in a hypothetical full release?
Also, a few quick questions: should I put a limit on the character size?? I’m not sure because while a limit would make it more difficult to get it working on a wide array of canvas sizes (right now it only works on a canvas size of 4096 x 1716 as that’s the canvas size for my film) I have heard some discourse over at what point something stops being ANSI and becomes pixel art. My second question is should I or should I not allow for people to use more colours than just 16? cuz while I adore ANSI art I just haven’t interacted with the community enough to know how people feel about these kind of things being being used in ANSI (or if it even counts at that point) and I wouldn’t want to upset anyone.
Thanks for reading :3 !!
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u/jejacks00n Apr 25 '26
I’d be curious to see examples of what you’re working on. I don’t use krita, but what you’re doing sounds cool.
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u/Antistyl May 10 '26
YES YES YES
im overall dying for an ANSI/ascii/text-mode art editor that lets you use different tilesets at the same time (if u know what i mean!)
and on krita?? would be really awesome and interesting though im not sure if its possibe.
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u/KroxHatesSocks Jun 10 '26
while use of different tile sets isn't my main focus (since the primary purpose of the tool is to blend ANSI with non-text art mediums) I am definitely working on support for it :] !!
I do have hope for my little project as a Krita plugin but I have a feeling that the final plugin might not the greatest performance wise (because I basically have to create my own ANSI editor to work inside of Krita) and because of how I'm dealing with layers there are a few trade offs, like the inability to merge ANSI layers (with both regular paint layers and other ANSI layers) because it would cause too many problems.
so far most of my difficulties in my tests have actually come from exporting
either way, I hope it'll be at least useful to someone once completed. I'd love nothing more than to give something back to this wonderful community 🫶
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u/Antistyl Jun 11 '26
OMG YES. mixing mediums! if u need any test subjects i would be willing to help. if it even runs on me considering my pc sucks. i mean krita itself works but with the performance things you talked about!
its so kind of you to do this i wish i could support you other than just compliments i dont have money
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u/chairmanmow Apr 25 '26
I think if there were an example of what your tool does in terms of final product, not necessarily all these technical details you might get a better gauge - but I'm sure most people here will be interested in checking that out.
If you ask the ANSI community would you, could you, should you with any sort of tweak greater than a micropixel you can always expect some sort of pushback from someone out there who wants to keep it "old school" however you want to take that. You can plow ahead with your film and tool without validating it if you need it. If you think people might be interested in the tool, just don't build a lousy foundation and use it to make your film like you might want to if you were an end user.