Saturday, 4 May 2019

Textmode art roundup: The Fourth May the Fourth Be With You -- more Star Wars fanart

The last three years I've done a Pixel Pompeii post of textmode Star Wars artwork around May 4th to celebrate that lovable space opera franchise that just wouldn't quit, so since I've got a pile of it gathering dust here I may as well discharge the lot with another of my increasingly rare posts here!

How should I organize these? By age, theme, chronology... maybe I'll mix it up. Here I'll start with a representative from Episode 1, a Jar-Jar Binks teletext screen by Uglifruit which washed up in the new MIST0519 artpack:


OK, are you done shuddering? Tempering the suck of Jar-Jar here is the awesomesauce of Episode III's General Grievous, drawn in PETSCII by Snake PETsken, also from MIST019:


Horsenburger drew this teletext screen of Donald "Childish Gambino" Glover as Lando Calrissian from the recent Solo - A Star Wars Story, next in the loose chronology. This piece you can also find in MIST0519, which admittedly weighs a little disproportionally here. (The SF-themed artpack also features non-textmode Star Wars art, as well as science fiction-based art of all kinds on other franchises and original concepts. I like to think it's well worth checking out, and not only because I spent a year putting it together!)


I'm trying to alternate friends and foes here, so now that we've reached the Episode IV in which they first appeared, here's a Jawa, mashed up into a Frank Zappa album cover in Shift_JIS by Kalcha, in his unique fashion, as seen in MIST0519:


Here's ANSI art of some metallic friends to whom we were introduced in Episode IV, though they were later retconned into the prequels:


That tableau was a portion of a larger piece drawn by Reset Survivor, a onetime staple of this blog, and next we have a focus on the golden god C-3PO drawn by The Knight of Fuel:


Then we need to step aside and make some room for The Bad Guys: your standard Star Wars type through the original trilogy are Stormtroopers, and here are a few takes on them.  Here's one of their helmets drawn by VodkaV of the recently-discovered uncontacted ANSI artist tribe at MIRCart.org:


Another Stormtrooper helmet, this time in newschool ASCII art, by... OK, I got nothing, the filename is just a string of gibberish. Is there some clue in the screen capture itself?


Snake PETsken returns with another PETSCII portrait, first widely seen (heck, the only place it will ever be widely seen) in January's "Blockheads" art gallery program for Commodore 64s:


And then there's this ANSI art Stormtrooper by Kyp of Black Maiden, whose palette caused a great deal of bemused concern when it surfaced as the 16 Colours ANSI of the Day: "It's time for a brief public service announcement concerning the importance of proper color selection. One wrong choice can put you on a path to oddville that you never meant to be on. This is just...I don't know. It's a Stormtrooper, but made entirely out of flesh and delivering flowers. His helmet eyes are squinty, almost sultry. He has a "come hither" stare. His flowers are in a styrofoam cup, and he's all flesh tone. A Fleshtrooper, if you will."  Bouquet aside, it actually is a faithful reproduction of the box art for the 1995 Lucasarts video game Dark Forces, the red tint a product of proximity to blaster fire.  But without that context, it is mildly risible:


What does it take to counteract a Stormtrooper?  Usually one of these will do it.  Misfit drew this ANSI art illustration of Han Solo's blaster:


Here's a teletext illustration by Horsenburger cutting us in on the fateful (Han shot first!  Exhibit a, please see above) showdown between Han Solo and Greedo in the Mos Eisley cantina, as seen in the new MIST0519 artpack collection:


We will return to Han Solo later on, but there's an important antagonist from Episode IV we haven't touched on yet ... ah yes, here he is!  I'm not sure in which movie he's lighting a cigar with his lightsaber, but... well, it's by Zen of the MIRCart crew, they usually introduce a twist to the story.


Zerovision of Glue drew this ANSI art Vader for a BBS named Endor, a double whammy, in their 21st artpack:


Snake PETsken joins the proceedings once again showing just how it is done.  (It is done, for the record in Petmate, for a C64 audience.)  You can find this screen in Blockheads.


And here's another Darth Vader ANSI art scroller for another Star Wars-themed BBS, named The Rebel Base.  


And here's something out of left field (a Mistigris specialty), some of XTComics' unique blend of ASCII art and emoji illustrating what it might look like when Darth Vader goes on vacation, as seen in the new MIST0519 artpack.
An important supporting player from Episode IV on the side of the heroes: an X-Wing Fighter, drawn in ASCII art (by ... I got nothing) that appeared on the NinjaPenguin 2017 thermal printer.
Tit for tat, here's an awesome spaceship of the Empire, a mighty Star Destroyer on parade past the Death Star:
OK, I take it back, that one was so terrible it didn't count at all. (Surely it turned up by happenstance in some collection or other of Public Domain ANSI art from back before anyone realised that it could be used to draw pictures and not just finger paintings.) So moving briskly forward to Episode V, here's an AT-AT walker as seen at the Battle of Hoth:

OK, Horsenburger's teletext version, as seen in MIST0519, is not very impressive because he's trying to duplicate the sprite art used in the 1982 Atari 2600 video game adaptation of the movie. But this ANSI art screen should make up for it, drawn by Magnetic M of GRiP/AD for Warp Zone BBS way back in the '90s:

And on from Empire Strikes Back to Return of the Jedi... here's a teletext screen of Lando checking in on Han Solo frozen in carbonite (I admit, it's a little much to pack into a single screen, but if anyone can do it, it's Horsenburger... from MIST0519):

And on to the real stars of Episode VI: the Ewoks! Here's ANSI art of one drawn by Nance of MIRCart:

Here's another one, drawn by ... er... MH of RZN:

Horsenburger is always happy to oblige, teletext-style. Go, Wicket, go!

And now we're on to the sequels. Here's the world's tiniest Kylo Ren, as drawn by Nail (and consequently, almost certainly captured in the wrong aspect ratio) as seen in the 4-20 Blocktronics artpack:


Typewriter artist Jamie Graham has also used his writing tool to draw a Kylo Ren, as seen in the MIST0519 artpack:

More to the point, he also used it to draw a porg:


We're wrapping up here, so one last bit of odds and ends, another Kalcha Shift_JIS piece mashing up Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon album art with the Death Star from... well, OK, all of the Star Wars movies just about:

Finally, Dman won the ANSI art compo at the 2018 Multmatograph demoparty with this group shot:
And that's all from this year! I've been trying for a couple of years now avoiding simply reposting the entire contents of the Blocktronics Star Wars artpack verbatim, but perhaps 2020, after the conclusion of the Skywalker trilogy, will be the year that sees that post. Until then... live long and prosper!
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