                             Artists News
                         - -------------- -


   Adon announces to all that might wonder where he has gone; You can
    write into your mag that i've got a new computer, and also a working
    keyboard - and maybe i will do some more logos in the coming time.

   Splatter announces the following about Azkiness; Still no good contact
    with Paszczak, but he might return and release again, but right now
    aint there any signs of life, and Splatter might join another crew,
    which he did when he joined up with Looker House. But Azkiness still
    lives on.

   Nup of Mo'Soul renamed to B. Like to chat him? Try to find his e-mail,
    he liked to have it censured here in the Gazette.

   Exile did recreate Grand Royal after Red Demon had left for House of
    Style, and later Low Profile. Now he's in charge of the group together
    with the new members War child and Lord Chaos.

   Maz spoke about his old group Art, and first declared it as dead (he
    also says that he's really tired of making ascii, and has probably
    quitted for good, but he couldn't 100% declare those facts) but did
    after a while convinced himself that Art probably still is active.

   Contras future is now unclear as the leader H2o left, and the other
    members hasn't said anything about any new joinings nor changes.

   Zeus declares him leaving Style with this: aha.. well, i'm releasing
    a new collection soon, to inform my resignment (which has happened over
    3-4 months ago) from style. i'll see if somebody's interested, but i
    don't think so, i'm no good at ascii anyway.. (Oh YES you are. Ed.)

   Lord Chaos is about to re-join a ascii group, and it might be the newly
    reorganizing Grand Royal.

   Art Bomb was released, and it showed not at all to be an 'ordinary'
    ascii-mag, but a vote-chart covered with 85% other interests (like psx
    and music) instead of pure ascii, like this mag, The Ascii Gazette.

   A new group was created, Mad Skillz, by Mexx, who earlier just had been
    independent.

   Ascii Makers Feduration renamed to Link 124, and two new members joined.

   Ultimo Imperio are once again in trouble. As Low Profile declared them war
    hasn't life been easy. And now recently were english Ultima 're'-born and
    will use the 'ult'-tag in file-names.

   The 100 Most Respected Ascii-Artists project by Punk of Head is cancelled
    after two never released issues. Instead will Punk work on a new larger
    project called 'Art and Style' including;
    - top 100 most respected ascii-artists (also counted tribute-collies).
    - top  20 most respected ascii-groups  (also counted tribute-collies).
    - top 100 guest-artists.
    - a list of all checked collies.
    which will be released in a not too distant future.

   Wild Style was reborn by Tsar1 when he released his first pack for a long
    time. He could also nowadays be seen on the internet once in a while.
    Other old school artists who has returned to the scene through the inter-
    net are Rotox, Kamenski, Maz and Mo' Soul's Manta.

   When Hiro Protagonist released his large latest colly, it was under the
    Remorse label. Remore is (according to Hiro Protagonist) THE oldest
    ascii/ansi-crew EVER (note that it has nothing to do at all with amiga-
    ascii) with a history that goes back to 1981. They are now reborn and
    are added to the Ascii Gazettes databank.
    This is a great part of what Hiro Protagonist explained about the pc-ascii
    scene. Read and learn, this explains alot;

       The Ibm ascii scene began in 1993, with an ansi group named Tribe.
    Tribe was the first ansi group to release ascii, their ascii man was
    Piromaniak. The first all-ascii group was Katharsis!Ascii (an offshoot
    of the original Katharsis clan). Tinyz was the original member of
    Kts!Asc and still heads the group today. Katharsis!Ascii membership
    included artists across the globe, and was the only ascii group in the
    ibm scene until in late 1994 when Necromancer and Necronite (both of
    whom were previously in Shiver) founded a group called Remorse. Remorse
    was the basis for what I have come to term the 'ibm ascii explosion'.

       It is here that we see a split in the ibm ascii scene, what we call
    the old school and the new school. The new school came about as certain
    artists in Remorse developed a new block style of ascii, more closely
    related to ansi than anything else. The old school remains based on
    _\|/- characters while the new school employs .s$" as it's primary
    character table (as a side note: alot of new school does not translate
    properly to an amiga due to certain highbit ascii characters which are
    frequently used in the style do not have exact counter-parts under the
    amiga ascii table, or their locations differ).

       Until Katharsis!Ascii released it's first ascii colly, the standard
    form for distribution of artwork in the ibm scene was single files in a
    zip archive. The reasons for this are simple: viewers could be easily
    coded to handle the relatively small individual works; the works could
    be colored or left uncolored on an individual basis at the artist's
    discression; and the tradition of ibm ascii was that each individual
    logo was a work of art unto itself, style and alignment changed to suit
    the needs of the logo rather than rewording the logo so it fits some sort
    of cookie-cutter ascii font set. And our scene's approach to art was
    entirely different than your's. When a group released the entire group
    released. Everyone who had something for the month's pack (usually
    released within the first week of a month) got their submissions to the
    senior staff or founder(s) who would then assemble everything into a
    single archive, write the newsletter and memberlist, and release the damn
    thing. In three weeks the whole process would start up again as artists
    reacted to last month's pack and came back with more individual styles
    and responses.

       The first 'colly' to debut in the ibm ascii scene was released by
    the group Katharsis!Ascii. It was called THENME.TXT and was a rather
    childish response to Remorse's founding (Kts!Asc was used to being the
    only ascii group), but it was 350k of amazing artwork and set us all
    spinning in different directions. The trend was not immediately picked
    up but Katharsis!Ascii continued to release it's 'Group Collys' and try
    to come to grips with a North American ascii boom in Remorse. Necromancer
    and Necronite dropped out of the scene by the 3rd Remorse pack and
    Whodini and Omicron were left to manage it their place. By the 5th pack
    Whodini had had enough and quit to found a new group, Trank. Invitations
    to join Trank were extended to most of Remorse (the people Whodini liked
    at any rate), and so we continued on under a new banner.

       The amiga font became popular with some of us, and so we did art which
    was accessable across platforms. The inherent nature of the / and \ under
    the amiga font bringing new shame to our old 80x25 ibm ascii styles which
    now looked like hell under it. Our productivity grew in leaps and bounds,
    instead of 4 or 5 logos a month artists began doing 70k ascii collys
    every three months. From there it all just kept on going..

    And this is what Hiro Protagonist has to say about Remorse;

       Remorse recently reformed by a merger between Trank and the ACiD ascii
    division (ACiD, if you've been living under a rock, is the longest 
    running art group in the world). The Wu-Trank label is being kept alive
    at some level, going back to represent the inner clique it originally had
    for some. Remorse1981 has evolved out of the Wu, at some level, but seems
    more progressive to me somehow. Meanwhile the main body of Remorse is
    releasing in the ACiD pack as well as the old familiar RMRS-xx.ZIP
    archives.

    The difference of the pc and amiga ascii-scenes has caused a lots of
    problems for magazines like this one. I've decided to include artists,
    groups and packs that appears in the .TXT-way. They may be from pc-
    related groups like Remorse. Just as long as they are released in a 'amiga
    viewable' way.

   There were rumours about a 'artists unite' project by some called Expose,
    but it never became more (at the moment) than rumours.
