Sadly, the Sixteen Colors ANSI Art and ASCII Art Archive has been down since the end of September, 2010. Changes were made to our shared hosting environment and I never got around to making changes to accommodating them. Sometime in the intervening moments I was approached by Brian Cassidy, once known as Mighty Mouse, regarding the site. He wanted to take a shot at writing a version of the site. I was more than happy to have someone else getting their hands dirty with the site, and gave him my blessing. For at least the fifth time in its life, Sixteen Colors was to undergo a rewrite from the ground up. As of today, that rewrite is complete enough for public consumption! We will continue to improve upon the site, but Sixteen Colors is no longer a dead site!
If you are not familiar with Brian, he is responsible for one of the most complete rendering engines for textmode artwork, Image::TextMode. In fact, the most recent version of the Sixteen Colors, which died in September, was using Image::TextMode. Brian was an ANSI artist many years ago, but like many of us, has turned to programming. He, along with others, has been one of the voices in my ear to keep Sixteen Colors thriving. As the site has neared completion I have jumped in to help with the code, but the site you see before you now is largely due to his hard work.
While Brian has worked hard to get a site that is functioning put together, we have also begun to piece together the backbone of a community that can keep the archive alive with or without the Sixteen Colors website. All of the code for Sixteen Colors is available on github as a public repository. In addition, the entire archive is mirrored on github for your consumption. Ansilove, another fine textmode rendering engine, has already begun to host a mirror off of the github repository. Anyone is free to mirror the archive, but if you would like to be listed as a mirror, please let us know. We also welcome anyone who would like to contribute to coding the site. Anything you are able to contribute, be it content, code, images, ideas or any other valuable skill is of use. No contribution is too small. Our goal is not to keep the archive for ourselves, but to keep ANSI, ASCII and all textmode art alive and remembered.
The last important piece of the github community is the ability to submit "Issues." Issues are not only bugs, but also ideas. Definitely submit any bugs to the list of github issues, but also include anything you would like to see that is not already listed. In addition, you can up vote bugs or ideas that you think are important. We will do our best to implement or fix anything that appears in the issues list.
For those I haven't lost through boredom or sleep, I want to make one more recognition. The design of both the dead version and current version were created by Luciano Ayres, also known as Enzo. Luciano has been one of the most prolific artists and steadfast proponents of ANSI over the past five years. He, along with the other members of Blocktronics, have worked to keep people creating ANSI art and keep the process enjoyable and inclusive. Please check out their packs and consider contributing to their efforts.
