colly - NicheInterests/mistfunk GitHub Wiki

COLLY

1. n. A collection of artwork, generally used to describe a compilation of ASCII art. Also used to describe compilations of ANSI logos which usually do not contain any pictures.

from The Artscene Dictionary

(Speculatively from "collect", borrowed from Latin collēctus, and sadly likely not from the French "collé" (glued), derived from the Ancient Greek κόλλα.)

Why gather small loose ANSI screens into collies? As scrollers increasingly dominated artscene discourse, having numerous files of humbler works, more modest in scope, strewn throughout an artpack's file listing was perceived as deceptive and underwhelming filler, misleading and disappointing artpack fans who were hoping that a 50-file pack would contain 50 epic scrollers, not 45 little logos and a paltry 5 scrollers. So they were gathered up, at some times even considered unreleasable individually, and presented as being worthy of inclusion by virtue of their combined quantity. (This perspective was not unanimous: some classic crews such as AWE Lettering (or, more recently, [Sauna]) emerged with an explicit focus on typography, where every logo {or "font") was free to stand on its own merits without being forced to cohabit with unrelated logos.)

The Platonic ideal of collies saw multiple logos by the same artist collected together in the same file, but in a diluted form they could also serve as a round-up of loose logos by numerous artists, and sometimes would even include small illustrations, toon doodles or BBS menu screens.

Often there would be delineation between discrete items in the colly through the inclusion of "cut lines" , dashed lines sometimes including an ASCII pair of scissors, like so: - - - - - - - - - - - - 8< - - - - - - - - - - - - -