IdeaWell

Project ideas from Hacker News discussions.

Animated ASCII Art for Web Pages

Original Article

Hacker News Discussion

📝 Discussion Summary (Click to expand)

1. Admiration and nostalgic appeal
Many commenters praised the work as beautiful, inspiring, and evocative of early‑computer art:
- “wonderful” – lordkrandel
- “beautiful. i don't see the pieces as animated, however.” – kirth_gersen
- “Thats awesome… this ASCII Art reminds me of my original desire to have something for each server I SSH into” – robbomacrae
- “Flow is gorgeous and fits this ascii art theme beautifully… this is a beautiful mod” – conesus
- “I kept scrolling down and my amazement grew… Split‑flap … is awesome. And the nature ones … got me thinking I need a digital frame to display them on.” – burmask

2. Debate over whether it is “true” ASCII art
A recurring thread questioned if the piece relies too heavily on color/dots or Unicode, stretching the definition of ASCII art:
- “This looks aesthetically pleasing but this is not ASCII Art it seems… All those differently sized dots are not ascii chars, are they? Perhaps this is unicode‑art?” – boguscoder
- “The point is that what you've described is no longer a useful definition of 'ASCII art'. That's now 'art with dots'.” – ghurtado
- “This isn't ascii art either, since nearly all of the information is in the color. This is, what we used to call, ANSI art.” – nomel
- “Being constructed of text characters is a very loose definition of ASCII art… it's on the far ends of the histogram of what people think of when they hear 'ASCII art'.” – graypegg

3. Requests for usability improvements and feature extensions
Users pointed out technical hiccups (mobile, reduced‑motion) and suggested enhancements:
- “Is it mobile only? I'm on a mac, it doesn't work in chrome / safari / firefox … no animation.” – mapshog
- “I see nothing being animated because my system is set to prefer reduced motion… I wish at least the demo page made that more obvious.” – BugsJustFindMe
- “Wish I could force it to play!” – herpdyderp
- Feature wishlist: decay on flames, automatic animation selection, random palettes per animation, integration with session identifiers, and a creation tool. – conesus (summary)
- “Yes, I will take a look at this… Thanks for the recommendation :D” – bas3line (respond to creation‑tool request)

🚀 Project Ideas

ASCII Animator Studio

Summary

  • Drag‑and‑drop tool that converts images, GIFs, or short videos into terminal‑friendly ASCII animations with configurable frame‑rate, color palette, and reduced‑motion fallback.
  • Solves the lack of a creation tool for custom ASCII art (requested by davidcollantes) and the frustration that current outputs rely on Unicode/dots rather than true ASCII.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Developers, sysadmins, digital artists who want custom terminal animations
Core Feature Upload media → preview ASCII frames → export as JSON/JS or a shell script with ANSI escape codes
Tech Stack Frontend: React (or Vue) + Canvas; optional backend: Node.js for heavy conversion; client‑side libraries like ascii-art, gifffer
Difficulty Medium
Monetization Hobby

Notes

  • “It would be awesome to be able to create these. If author is around, would you consider a creation tool as well?” – davidcollantes
  • Addresses criticism that current art “is not ASCII … it’s Unicode‑art” (ghurtado, BugsJustFindMe) by delivering pure ASCII output with optional ANSI colors.

TermScene – Per‑Session Terminal Animator

Summary

  • A shell/tmux/crabigator plugin that lets users assign, randomize, and animate ASCII art per terminal session, with decay effects, palette selection, and the ability to render in a limited width section (e.g., a side bar in crabigator).
  • Meets the desire for session‑specific visual cues, automatic animation selection, flame‑decay, and integration with tools like crabigator (conesus, robdmacrae).

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Terminal power users, developers using tmux/shell, sysadmins managing multiple servers
Core Feature Loads ASCII art frames, applies per‑session decay, random palette, and can render in a configurable width/position via a plugin API
Tech Stack Node.js or Go plugin; rendering via blessed-contrib or term.js; configuration stored in JSON/YAML
Difficulty Medium
Monetization Hobby

Notes

  • “I want a decay on the flame, so on every state change, the flame slowly works its way back down to a base rate…” – conesus
  • “Automatic choosing of a different animation on every open…” – conesus
  • “I’d like a way to integrate the plugin into crabigator so its takes a single section instead of being full width.” – conesus
  • Would give the per‑server mental map described by robdmacrae when using SSH/MOTD art.

PureASCII Player

Summary

  • A lightweight web/component library that renders true ASCII‑only animations (using only ASCII characters and ANSI colors) with explicit play/pause controls and respects prefers‑reduced‑motion.
  • Fixes the issues of animations not playing due to reduced‑motion settings, the lack of a forced‑play option, and the criticism that current art is not genuine ASCII (BugsJustFindMe, ghurtado).

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Web developers, documentation sites, anyone wanting to embed ASCII animations with accessibility controls
Core Feature Provides a DOM component that iterates over pre‑converted ASCII frames, offers a forced play button, and disables animation when reduced‑motion is requested
Tech Stack Plain JavaScript/TypeScript (optional Svelte/React); uses requestAnimationFrame; no canvas needed
Difficulty Low
Monetization Hobby

Notes

  • “I see nothing being animated because my system is set to prefer reduced motion. … I wish at least the demo page made that more obvious.” – BugsJustFindMe
  • “Your point is valid, I just want to add that deriving ASCII versions of them should be trivial…” – moralestapia (highlights demand for true ASCII)
  • Adds a clear UI cue and forced‑play option, solving the buried blurb problem and accessibility concerns.

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