i havent got a clue to be honest! how can i check some of these guys art out? have they got sites?

Desoto, nup! and markryder of Mo'Soul - not to forget the ever fantastic Epsilon^Design crew. Arclite.. Art.. Dezign.. Contra..

ascii (newschool):
 - Mr. Self Destruct
 - Discyple
 - Spinsane
 
ansi:
 - Lord Jazz
 - Halaster
 - nootropic
 
and to the person who commented on lord jazz ripping, that is a joke right?

I can't believe I never posted a list of my favorite artists here, back when the forum was active. I used to love this kind of thing. Anyway, looking back.. Discyple is an obvious choice, of course, but I really think his late asciis are the best, not the, well, classic stuff. I love DY-JACK from TUS 4, and some of the things in Mimic 73. One of the last asciis by Mr. Self Destruct, MD-TOV from Revival 0602, is one of my favorite pieces, and it gets better with age. Incredible stuff, really, and much better than the impressive but kind of silly asciis from Soap packs.
 
Late Gravedancer is amazing. I guess Gravedancer is one of the most horribly underrated artists, I never saw him appear in any Top 5 or Top 10, but pretty much everything he did since late Odelay (that girl picture in the last pack) is worth seeing and studying, especially asciis released in late Mimic packs.. and I think at least one was released in a 123 pack; anyway, in his best works there's this quality.. the characters are so alive, I guess? I don't think any other ascii artist ever achieved this sort of thing so consistently. And it's all low-ascii, too! And speaking of portraits, I've always liked Mankind's portraits from Karma packs. I guess they're not as impressive now as they seemed back in the day, but still, good stuff.  
 
Neil (a.k.a. The Prodigy, RKO Diode, etc.) and Crasher did very interesting things late in their careers; it was textmode art, not really ascii or ansi or anything you could put a label on. Neil did this solo pack in.. 1999? Diode-01? and released similar asciis in Mimic around the same time. And Crasher did some unique things in the 2003 solo pack, crs-mnmp; aside from the minimalistic things there are two beautiful landscapes (ascii landscapes anyone?) and a couple of, eh, narrative asciis? I don't think anyone else did anything of the sort. There were some semi-related technical experiments in Anal packs (sorry, I forget the artist's name. Very embarrassing) and DKNY/EEH asciis in Mimic, but I don't think they compare.
 
And then there were all kinds of other artists with very interesting, individual, beautifully realized styles, i.e. Haji, Konami, etc., but there are really too many of them. Anyway, I must've forgotten at least a couple of people already. I don't know much about Amiga ascii unfortunately (back in the day many amiga artists seemed really hostile to us NS artists, for whatever reason. Or maybe it's just my imagination/bad memory), but I do remember h2o being an amazingly creative artist. ANSI I know practically nothing about. 27inch was great stuff (all those years and I still can't get that sea/pirate thing out of my head), as for the classic era, I've got no idea. Aside from Nootropic/Dieznyik, that is, who was probably one of the best textmode artists ever, ansi or ascii.