aw man, i love older CGI and 3d graphics because of how otherworldly and mystical it is. the limitations of early 3d tech meant that artists couldn't just recreate realistic-looking scenes, so they had to create entirely new styles instead that could be rendered by this early tech. if you're forced to make something different from reality, you're no longer bound by its limitations, so you might as well just make it as weird and crazy and cool as possible!
sadly, this style pretty much totally vanished once computers got powerful enough to start attempting to recreate the look of reality. nowadays, it seems like all that CGI does is chase ever more realistic graphics instead of using the increases in computing power to further break the rules and explore outside the bounds of reality.
one of my personal favorite example of earlier 3D graphics is "mosaik" by haujobb, a PC demo from 2001. it's definitely newer than the examples posted by melooon, but i think it's still interesting.
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