ASCII and its expanded form, ANSI, is the coolest thing ever. Artwork using just regular keyboard characters has been around for as long as ASCII has even existed (which was around as far back as the early 60s, in the late 60s Lyndon B. Johnson mandated that all government computers MUST support ASCII). I finished this just minutes ago in a text editor:
#### /-|
/\####/ |
| \##/ / /\/\/\/|
\ | ---------
\ | / \ *
\ | / [@] [@] \ *-*
| | | / *-*
| | | U | *-*
| | \---------/ *-*
| \ / \ *******
\ \/ \ {8***
\ \ 8888}
\ ---------8888}
\ 8888}
\ ---------8888}
++++++++++++++/ ***
| /\ |
| / | |
| \ | |
| | | |
| | | \
| | | |
| | | \__
| | | \
| | \ \
_----- \ | \
- | | \
- | | |
---------------- |____________|
Coolest thing about ASCII is that you can do it in any text editor. What about ANSI? It started popping up in late 80s because it has a larger array of characters and can do even something similar to pixel art with colouring. Late 80s bulletin boards used ANSI for pornographic distribution because of its very low amount of bandwidth requirements compared to downloading a data image like a jpeg or png. There exists to this day, a subculture around ASCII and ANSI art, who knows, I might make my own the future with regards to animations.
HeroPapaya
long ago in an old magazine I saw art that somebody made, pretty similar to acii art but way simpler, made with a typewriter. It accurately looked like kids riding a sleigh. I'm very impressed that they could pull it off on a typewriter, there's no room for mistakes unless you wanna redo the entire thing, and how many tries would it take to make it look right? Also I think they had to come up with the idea all on their own since they probably didn't have access to anything like it.