img2blocks

this image is supposed to be made almost entirely of sextant blocks, the Unicode characters around U+1FB00 – U+1FB1E made out of two columns of three blocks. They’re originally from broadcast teletext, and were made to build low-resolution images on a text screen

And here’s the original tiny image:

Making the pixel to character map is quite tricky. The Sextant character block isn’t contiguous, and it’s not in the order we need. It’s also missing four characters: empty block, full block, left half block and right half block. These have to be pulled in from other Unicode blocks.

This is the map I came up with, from 0–63 with LSB at bottom right and MSB at top left:

 🬞🬏🬭🬇🬦🬖🬵🬃🬢🬓🬱🬋🬩🬚🬹🬁🬠🬑🬯🬉▐🬘🬷🬅🬤🬔🬳🬍🬫🬜🬻🬀🬟🬐🬮🬈🬧🬗🬶🬄🬣▌🬲🬌🬪🬛🬺🬂🬡🬒🬰🬊🬨🬙🬸🬆🬥🬕🬴🬎🬬🬝█

After that, it’s a small matter of bashing something together in Python with PIL and Numpy. Here’s the source:

or if you want to take a look first: img2blocks – bitmap to Unicode sextants

(yes, there are clever things like Chafa that can do more, but it can’t do exactly what this does)