As our ability to make better resolution images has increased, the desire to decrease the resolution – but in fun ways – has increased. On your phone there’s probably apps that “posterize” and “artify” or “8bit-ify”, but you can also do it on your computer using some cross-platform python applications or a webapp.
The simplest is ascii art, and there’s plenty of programs out there to do that (asciiart on Debian, for example), as well as webapps like Glass Giant’s ascii art generator. With any of them, you’ll get output like this:
img2txt is a pretty straightforward python application that can output several different styles; most notably it also allows the output of ANSI art (cue nostalgia for the BBS crowd):
But the one that really intrigued me (and prompted me writing this post) is legofy, which takes your images (including animated GIFs, though I’ve been having trouble with that) and makes them look like they were created with 1×1 LEGO bricks…and yes, if you zoom in on the images, you can discover that they’re actual brand-name virtual bricks. I personally like using the –size 75 option as a balance between resolution and LEGO-ness:
Check them out and enjoy!