it's hard to describe to younger folks how much fewer images one had access/was exposed to before the internet.
like. church life was a huge part of my upbringing, and in modern churches (or basically any institution where talks are given) you have lots of slides right? so people can follow along and see what you are talking about, lots of text and images on them. infographics are easy to make and a given now.
but when i was growing up, my mom would make COUNTLESS foam display boards, with hand lettered words and hand drawn illustrations. for holding up in front of the congregation. because we didn't have slides! and printing would have been crazy expensive. i sound ancient!! it must sound unimaginable. but this was not that long ago.
i first learned about animators because of a behind the scenes featurette on a disney (bambi i think) vhs. had i not seen images of people painting the cels, i just wouldn't have known about it at all.
when i was little, books were my references for drawing. if it wasn't in a book that i owned, i just didn't have it as a reference. i had this one huge paperback book of 19th century pen and ink illustrations of animals, and i credit that book with a lot of my style/interest in animals and interest in linework. it had a huge impact on me because i didn't have many other reference materials.
when i got into second grade and they had mac computers with internet access in my classroom. i was blown away by how i could just look up an animal and find many images of them. find information and just read and read. it's so normal now but at the time it was so new and thrilling.
and i can only imagine how much more extreme this feels for people older than me
