The history of environment art is characterized by a gradual progression of technical advancements that enabled such projects. Although it is difficult to pinpoint its origins, various individuals and their contributions have significantly upgraded backgrounds and environments work.
Film The
Walt Disney Company created cinematography in the animation realm. Many individuals contributed to the Disney style.
Eyvind Earle and
Claude Coats were award-winning artists who worked on films such as
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,
Fantasia,
Cinderella,
Peter Pan, and
Sleeping Beauty. Earle and Coats produced many effects via styling and colors. For example, Earle produced the "magical, medieval look" that is in Sleeping Beauty and Claude produced "stunning watercolor background paintings" in Pinocchio. Later techniques such as
matte painting,
miniatures,
rear projection, and
forced perspective were used to simulate large-scale settings, oftentimes when "backgrounds and environments [were] too expensive, impractical, or impossible to recreate or achieve through traditional on-location or practical set design". Popular films such as
Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back used matte painting to achieve realism in the background.
Gaming Early games such as
Pong used simple backgrounds, often with solid colors. This was followed by
pixel art in games such as
Donkey Kong,
Legend of Zelda, and
Super Mario Bros. GPUs allowed realism in game art, including 3D illusions in
Doom to simulate a 3D environment. Later games had access to both 2D and 3D imagery via software such as
Maya,
Blender,
Nuke,
Unreal Engine, and
Adobe Creative Suite. For example,
VALORANT's maps are 3D. == Impacts and challenges ==