Check out libcaca[1], a image-to-ASCII library that already available as a mplayer and VLC output.<p>There's also a demoscene competition where entries can only use text-mode art, TMDC [2]<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libcaca" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libcaca</a>
[2] <a href="http://tmdc.scene.org/" rel="nofollow">http://tmdc.scene.org/</a>
A simple lookup table also works well.<p>Here I use Unicode 9.0 and True Color support to render images as text using Python: <a href="https://github.com/daleroberts/tv" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/daleroberts/tv</a>
You can test the rendering on your browser using the live demo at: <a href="https://art.pixlab.io" rel="nofollow">https://art.pixlab.io</a>