How to create ASCII-ART

Today more and more text based systems come to the market, and the art of creating wonderfull images with simple characters slowly get's forgotten.
I want to stop that, by giving some tips on how to do some.

Tip one: character cells

If you look closely at this image

you will notice that all characters are spaced evenly. This is the case on most terminals because of simple technical reasons.
Those evenly spaced characters make ASCII-Art a lot easier, kinda like making a mosaic of rectangular tiles

Tip two: Making lines

This actually now is trivial, just look at the example:

       |
_______|_______ /
-------+-------/
       |   \  /
       |    \/
       |    /\
           /  \

Tip three: filling

By using blocks of the same character you can create filling. Examine the rectangles and see how the pattern changes.

.......  //////  ------  ######  HHHHHH IIIIII 
.......  //////  ------  ######  HHHHHH HHHHHH
.......  //////  ------  ######  HHHHHH IIIIII
.......  //////  ------  ######  HHHHHH HHHHHH

Tip four: proportion

Depending on your terminal or printer the aspect ratio of the letters will be different. So they are wider or narrower.

As you can see the rectangles look different, some are wider some higher. That is hopefully because of the different fonts and not because of a typo of me.

Tip five: allowed characters

Depending on the terminal or printer some characters may not be allowed or some characters might look different.
A good example is the ~ (tilde) character. On many terminals it's on the upper part of the character-cell, but on others it's in the middle. Just try yourself you might be astonished.

Finally one of my works:

Welcome to ...             __-----~~-----__
                       /~~~     DIGIMON    ~~~\
                  /~~~~     /~~~~~~~~~~~~~\    ~~~~\
        /~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~/_______________\~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~/
       /-#######---###---#######--###--###---###---######---###--##-/
      /-###--###--###--###---##--###--###---###--###--###--###--##-/
     /-###--###--###--###-------###--#########--###--###--#######-/
    /-###--###--###--###-####--###--#-###-###--###--###--##-####-/
   /-###--###--###--###--###--###--#-###-###--###--###--##-####-/
  /-###--###--###--###--###--###--#-----###--###--###--##--###-/
 /-#######---###---####-##--###--#-----###---######---##--###-/
/__________________________\~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~/_________________/
                  \____     \_____________/    ____/
                       \___      MUCK      ___/
                           ~~-----__-----~~   furries.mine.nu 4201

Since it contains tildes I now add a graphic version of it:

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