Structure-based ASCII Art (2010) 11 years ago
The Chinese seem to be doing this a lot still. It is hard to find a lot of examples, but they are out there (http://ansi.loli.tw/).
Of course, we used to do this all the time in western countries and a whole underground scene formed out of it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_art_scene). You can see most of the old artwork on Sixteen Colors (http://sixteencolors.net)