Motion ASCII guide

Three looks

Each picture below was made in Motion ASCII from its moving test pattern; the guide cannot use a video of its own. The table under each one is the whole recipe; everything not listed stays as the page opens.

The pattern keeps moving, so yours will differ in the detail. With your own video the same settings draw your footage instead.

In the tables, the Glyphs row names the ink.

Green terminal blocks

With few columns each block is big enough to see. Green ink ignores the colours of the pattern and uses only how dense each block is, so the flow reads as light and shade.

Try Amber with the same settings for the other old terminal colour.

Fine detail in colour

Seventy steps and a softer contrast give each cell a character close to its true brightness, so the bands of the pattern blend smoothly. Each character keeps the colour under it.

Raise Resolution for more detail; the characters get smaller.

Inverted binary

Binary has only three steps: blank, 0 and 1. Inverted, the brightest parts of the pattern go blank and the darker bands fill with 1s, so the picture reads as data.

Turn Invert off and the blank and dense parts swap places.