This was the topic I chose for our first presentation and that's mainly because I've recently read some articles related to it. The 90s triggered a huge upsurge in the number of artists needed to create video games and I planned to include all the reasons why that happened so I started to do a little research on that.

The main reason why games became art-heavy during 90s is the arrival of 3D, an arrival marked by the release of Toy Story, in 1995. This was the huge step that needed to be taken in order to rebirth the video games industry. Shortly after that, video games started to move from "2D sprite animations to real time rendered 3D games". That not only was more friendly from a visual point of view, but also gave the players a freedom in their movement, as you could go side by side, in front of and behind scenery or objects.

The best part of this presentation was that while doing my research, I discovered so many amazing artists. I was very familiarized with the art of Mark Molnar, as he is one of my favourite environment artists, together with Raphael Locoste and with the work of Nick Bradshaw, as he worked on a lot of stunning covers for Marvel and DC comics, but I have never been aware of Dennis Glowacki (whose texturing is stunning) or Andrew Bosley (an iconic concept artist whose work makes me feel bad that I haven't discovered him earlier).

Steampunk Pirates by Mark Molnar

DC Nighout by Nick Bradshaw 

Andrew Bosley

As it was a team project, I had a lot of things to learn from my team mates. For example, I have never noticed that the 90s also changed the music in video games, so that they actually started to have a soundtrack instead of a couple of beeps and 5 broken notes on a piano. To be honest, it didn't seem to me something that deserves to be in the spotlight when they first mentioned that, but at a second thought, there were a lot of times when the sound induced the mood of a game and it made me have shivers along my spine.

The only thing that made me really upset during this project was the lack of women in the video games 90s industry. I tried to find some female iconic figure in order to include her in our presentation, but I had no luck. Meanwhile, this industry started to enroll an impressive number of women, which unfortunately, it's still quite low. Hopefully, in the next decade, they will have the chance to get in higher places than they have been so far in the mesmerizing and tricky industry of video games.