# ASCII art animations

**URL:** <https://discourse.processing.org/t/ascii-art-animations/35988>\
**Category:** Coding Questions\
**Created:** [March 28, 2022, 9:04pm UTC](https://discourse.processing.org/t/ascii-art-animations/35988 "2022-03-28T21:04:43Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![arcadeperfect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7ab992/32.png) [@arcadeperfect](https://discourse.processing.org/u/arcadeperfect)\
**Post date:** [March 28, 2022, 9:04pm UTC](https://discourse.processing.org/t/ascii-art-animations/35988/1 "2022-03-28T21:04:44Z")

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Hi

I’d like to try to create something along the lines of the super dope ascii animations of Andreas Gysin and others:

> **[ertdfgcvb](https://ertdfgcvb.xyz/)**
>
> Studio for design and code.

I believe the method he uses is to hand select a set of characters in increasing visual density and map “pixel” values to these so that a low value gives you something like “.” and a high value gives you something like “#”

To do this in processing - I know I can access the pixel array and easily enough map that to an array of characters. However since each individual pixel from the underlying animation becomes enough pixels to draw a character, I want a pixel array with smaller dimensions than I will ultimately render as characters.

To put another way I want one pixel array that is low resolution that generates my data from animations, and another one that is higher resolution that ultimately renders the animations.

I also don’t want to draw the first pixel array.

Is this approach possible in Processing?

Thanks!

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![arcadeperfect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7ab992/32.png) [@arcadeperfect](https://discourse.processing.org/u/arcadeperfect)\
**Post date:** [March 29, 2022, 4:15am UTC](https://discourse.processing.org/t/ascii-art-animations/35988/2 "2022-03-29T04:15:04Z")

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Never mind!

I have found that PGraphics is exactly what I was looking for