Luke Skywalker had a hell of a responsibility saving the galaxy from the Evil Empire, but New Zealander Simon Jansen has taken on a task with even more nerve-wracking details.
The Star Wars-fixated software engineer is in the throes of adapting the entire Star Wars series into ASCII animation.
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ASCII animation, or “asciimation” as Jansen calls it, is the painstaking craft of creating ASCII art using common keyboard symbols to represent images, then animating them using programs such as Microsoft Notepad. The most infamous example of ASCII art is that trite little emoticon, the colon-and-end-parenthesis smiley face: 🙂
Jansen has taken the form to another level, building a scene-by-scene recreation of the original Star Wars movie. The work in progress is viewable in his Star Wars Asciimation site.
The project, inspired by a joke email, quickly grew too large to work on in Microsoft Notebook, so Jansen weaves his magic in Visual C. Currently, he has worked up to the scene in which the crew of the Millennium Falcon first stumble upon the Death Star.
But don’t expect to see Obi Wan and Darth Vader duke it out, ASCII-style, anytime soon. The project, which Jansen began in July 1997, is progressing more slowly than a Hutt footrace.
Like any Jedi worth his saber, Jansen quickly discovered the key to creating good asciimation: patience.
“I do little bursts,” he said. “I can come back and look at it in a whole new light — whereas if you were to sit down and do a film over days and days, you’d go a bit strange.”
Why is he doing it? That’s a mystery even to Jansen himself. While he claims to have “a bit of a passion for Star Wars,” the Kiwi auteur insists he really isn’t that fond of creating ASCII art (or animation, for that matter).
“To tell the truth, it’s quite boring to do,” he said. “You have to be in a kind of strange frame of mind where there’s nothing else you’d rather be doing.”
His animation has earned a mild cult following among ASCII enthusiasts, nevertheless. Because he prefers not to post his email to the public, the creator of what could be considered the definitive ASCII animation masterwork has a reputation more shrouded in mystery than Darth Maul.
Messages periodically appear on the ASCII animation newsgroup news:alt.ascii-art.animation from well-wishers searching in vain for “that Simon Jansen guy.”
Asciimation also attracts the attention of the odd professional animator. Computer game designer Simon Ashford of Australia sees Jansen’s work as an inspiring, somewhat silly labor of love, with the emphasis on labor.
“He’s done a fantastic job,” said Ashford, who has worked for Universal Pictures and for Roger Rabbit creator Richard Williams. “But he could have edited the thing down to three minutes. It’d be much more accessible, and he’d get his life back.”
Not among his fans, however, is Lucasfilm, whose representatives decline to comment on the animation.
Jansen certainly didn’t endear himself to the company with his asciimation side project, The Death of Jar Jar, in which the floppy-eared underdog meets a grisly fate while working on Anakin Skywalker’s pod racer. That is, as grisly as you can get when you represent disembowelment with o’s and *’s.
Jansen took time out from his opus to create the parody in hopes of getting a reaction from the public — and because he just didn’t like Jar Jar.
“I didn’t care for the character much,” he said, “I mean, he would have been OK if he would have been in the film for [just] a few minutes.”
If Jansen ever does finish, he doesn’t plan to tackle other similar projects. Although he’s been asked to do the Maltese Falcon and Casablanca, he’s concerned about the reaction a Bogart double feature might cause.
“People are used to seeing Star Wars parodies,” he explained. “I haven’t had anyone say ‘this is belittling Star Wars‘ … well, except for the Jar Jar thing.”
