Override toString() Method

[Apparition78]

Hey all, long story short i'm string to override the default toString() method to do something else. The problem i'm running into (highlighted in red) is that I can't access my 2d ArrayList that I create in AsciiImage. My current code is as follows:

import java.awt.image.BufferedImage;
import java.util.ArrayList;

public class AsciiImage extends Image {

private int height;
private int width;

AsciiImage(int w, int h) {
height = h;
width = w;

ArrayList<ArrayList<Character>> characters = new ArrayList<ArrayList<Character>>();
for(int i=0; i<width; i++){
characters.add(new ArrayList<Character>());
for(int j=0; j<height; j++)
characters.get(i).add(new Character('c'));
}
}

public String toString(){
String rows = new String();
for(int i=0; i<width; i++){
for(int j=0; j<height; j++){
rows += (characters.get(i).get(j));
}
rows += "\n";
}
return rows;
}
}

[Fubarable]

Perhaps you want to make characters a class variable by declaring it in the class, not in the class's constructor.