▚ Desktop animation studio · macOS · Windows · Linux
ASCIIGen turns video, images, text and your webcam into full-colour character animation, then hands you a tiny player for React, Svelte or plain HTML.
One-time purchaseLifetime updatesPrivate repo + Discord
Every control in ASCIIGen is drawn from the character grid your animation lives on, so what you see while you tune is exactly what you export.
Drop in a video, an image or a folder of frames. Every change previews instantly on the GPU while the exact engine renders the real frames behind it.
Titles, logos and words become animations: pick a face, a motion and a gradient paint, then any character set.
Open a finished animation and paint on it character by character, with onion skins either side of the frame you are on.
Favourites, folders and #tags keep the library tidy. Drag a card straight into Finder or your editor, or export it as video.
Switch character sets, apply a look, import, compare or create without leaving the keyboard. Press ? for every shortcut.
Bring footage, a still, a word or your webcam. Every source goes through the same engine, the same looks and the same exports.
MP4, MOV, WebM, stills and PNG sequences. Trim, crop and find a clean loop before you convert. ffmpeg is built in, so there is nothing else to install.
Type a title or a logo line and animate it: decode, type, wave, glitch or pulse, with gradient paints and any character set.
Your webcam or any window, converted in real time on the GPU. Pop out a clean output window for OBS, and record takes straight into the library.
Describe a scene and Grok Imagine renders a source clip, or animate a still or a logo. Run three takes and keep the best. Uses your own xAI key.
The same source as ASCII, blocks, Braille and pixels, rendered live below. In the studio you also get custom character sets, outlines that trace edges, and a flicker guard that holds glyphs steady between frames.
Live mode converts a webcam or any screen in real time, with a clean output window for streaming. Try a browser version of it right here.
Runs entirely in this tab. Nothing is recorded or uploaded.
Live mode in the studio does this with your webcam or any screen, then records takes straight into your library. Try the browser version here.
Your camera stays on your device.
A little Tokyo, a little arcade and plenty of characters, compressed and ready to drop into a page. New ones land in the repository over time.
Showing 13 animations
A world made of characters.
A little wave of good luck.
A colourful spark of motion.
Perfectly happy doing very little.
A quiet corner of the city.
Small ship. Big plans.
One more for the high score.
A few characters with real rhythm.
Your next favourite sidekick.
A tiny mythical creature, in full colour.
A little personality goes a long way.
Meet the face of ASCIIGen.
A little everyday magic.
Export a compact frame bundle with a player for your framework, a single-file embed, or render straight to video.
import ASCIIAnimation from './components/ascii'export default function Hero() {return (<ASCIIAnimationframeFolder="animations/planet"quality="high"frameCount={79}fps={24}className="w-full h-[480px]"/>)}
The whole studio, every player and the animation library, plus everything we add later.
Secure checkout by Polar · instant accessThe ASCIIGen desktop studio for macOS, Windows and Linux, the React, Svelte, vanilla JS and web-component players, the animation library, and future updates. Access comes through a private GitHub repository plus a private Discord community.
No. The studio ships with its own ffmpeg and no longer uses ImageMagick. Install the app and start converting.
React (including Next.js, Remix and TanStack Start), Svelte, plain JavaScript, or any page at all through the <ascii-animation> web component. You can also export a single self-contained HTML embed.
Yes. Export MP4 or GIF for socials, WebM with an alpha channel for transparent overlays, or ProRes 4444 for your editor.
AI is optional. Generating a clip, animating a still or refining a prompt uses your own xAI API key, and xAI bills that usage directly. Everything else runs locally on your machine.
No. Live mode runs on your own GPU, both in the studio and in the demo on this page. Nothing leaves your device unless you export it.
Yes. Use the included animations, anything you make and the players in personal or commercial projects. No attribution required.
Polar invites you to the private GitHub repository and the Discord automatically after checkout. Pull the repository whenever you like to get the latest studio and animations.
One purchase gets you the studio, the players and the library, for good.