VGANSI - NicheInterests/mistfunk GitHub Wiki

As long as [ANSI art] was being viewed in its native element, on BBSes and in terminals, historically extra-tall [scroller]s or extra-wide [BIN] pieces could never be viewed in their entirety all at once, requiring audiences to page down or creep along one new row at a time to reveal more of the giant image. (In the 21st century, terminal windows can be quite a bit bigger, and some BBS softwares have attempted to catch up with them.) Even when creating the works the artists weren't able to survey the entirety of their canvas at a glance, meaning that viewed up close, all the parts of an image would fit handily together and flow seamlessly one part into another, where an impossible-at-the-time survey of the complete image might reveal that perspective or proportions got dodgy across the complete course of the artwork.

This changed when ANSI viewing programs innovated with the "VGA thumbnail" mode, allowing people to, for the first time, see the whole artwork all at once. Artists could make some changes, then swap graphics modes to see how things were going so far overall, and then duck back in close to make nips and tucks they otherwise might never have even realised were necessary.

But as with all things, there were some trade-offs: putting more effort into ensuring that a scroller looked good in VGA preview might well mean skimping on the texture and detail offered the end viewer back in 80x25 mode. If you fail to put in the work at the ground level and are just playing to the audiences looking at the "VGA preview", then the idea is that you are not drawing ANSI per se but rather "VGANSI", using an ANSI art editor as a clumsy ANSI pixelart editor, eschewing the unique qualities (notably the half-block and shade-block character use) that make the ANSI medium distinct and unique in favor of pixelart that could just as well have been doodled in MS Paint or Deluxe Paint or aesprite. You may make a big and impressive ANSI art scroller, but if it contains none of the distinct ANSI flavour on the character by character level then you have actually just drawn a long piece of VGANSI.

The general sentiment in the ANSI art community is that if you are going to draw pixelart, you may as well draw it in a pixelart editor and save it in a pixelart format, and if you're going to draw ANSI art, you may as well draw it in an ANSI art editor and save it in an ANSI art format. Consequently, 1-to-1 adaptations of eg. video game sprite art into ANSI art also has a way of winding up tarred as VGANSI as well.