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A simple ANSI art editor for making 80x25 terminal/DOS-style ANSI art files. Built with Free Pascal and Lazarus.

I mostly made this for personal use — I wanted a way to create .ans files that would display correctly in Python terminal apps, and couldn't find anything lightweight that didn't require a ton of setup. So I built my own.

There are some excellent ANSI creator apps available (Moebius!) but I wanted something easier to learn and use. So, here's my take on it.

• Draw on a configurable canvas (default 80x25) using the full CP437 character set (all 256 characters)
• 16-color VGA palette or 256-color xterm palette
• Tools: brush, flood fill, eyedropper, line, rectangle, ellipse, selection, and typing mode
• Selection workflow: copy (Ctrl+C), cut (Ctrl+X), paste (Ctrl+V) with interactive placement
• Interactive paste placement: move with mouse or arrow keys, commit with Enter or click, cancel with Esc
• Image import (PNG/JPG/BMP/GIF) with ANSI conversion
• Live preview window that renders color output from the current grid
• Row and column rulers, optional grid overlay, and recent chars/colors swatches
• Saves and loads .ans files as clean UTF-8 with ANSI escape sequences
• Undo/redo (100 action history)

In typing mode: arrow keys move the cursor, Backspace erases, Enter goes to next row, Escape exits typing mode.

Right-click on the canvas acts as the eyedropper (picks char + fg + bg).

In paste placement mode: arrow keys move the ghost paste, Enter commits, Esc cancels.

You need Free Pascal 3.2+ and Lazarus installed. The build script assumes Lazarus is at C:\lazarus — adjust the paths in build_full_clean.ps1 if yours is somewhere else.

.\build_full_clean.ps1

That compiles everything and puts the exe in the project folder. It also cleans up all the .o, .ppu, and other build artifacts FPC leaves around.

The output is a single standalone .exe, no installer, no dependencies.

build_full_clean.ps1 now compiles with size-focused flags (-O3 -XX -CX -Xs) and embeds the app icon resource. This is the recommended script when you want the smallest standalone executable.

.\build_release.ps1

This creates dist/release-win64/ with:

• ANSICreator.exe
• README.md
• samples/

There's a samples/ folder with a few .ans files to open and poke around:

• welcome.ans — info/welcome screen showing keyboard shortcuts
• rainbow.ans — full-color gradient showcase
• blockart.ans — retro block-character landscape scene
• boxdemo.ans — box-drawing and block/shade character reference
• logo.ans — pixel-art style ANSI Creator logo

Saved files are plain UTF-8 text with ANSI escape sequences — the same thing you'd get from a Python colorama output or a classic BBS ANSI file. No proprietary format, no SAUCE record appended. You can read them directly in Python:

import sys
with open('myart.ans', encoding='utf-8') as f:
    sys.stdout.write(f.read())

Or on Windows with the right terminal (Windows Terminal works fine):

type myart.ans

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2026 Quantum Pixelator

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.