A beautiful image Pixero. Love it.
On the other hand, the basic principles of modeling remained the same.
What has changed is the huge development of render engines and the ability to support huge meshes.
Having this 3d digital sculpting. (ZB, MB, 3DC, Sculptris, Blender)
Most importantly the tremendous power of modern CPUs and the excellent freeware around.
Back in 1996... when a quadra 700 and in 1997 (mac G3) where more than enough to run the excellent macromedia freehand. I was able to construct a 24 pages brochure, full of quality scans. If I recollect right, it was more flexible than Indesign or QExpress are today.
In 1998 when the best ever Illustrator (V8.01) was able to run a 2dCAD plugin.