I first became interested in art as a kid, my cousin had a book of Science Fiction Art titled Spacewreck.  It was a compilation of works depicting, what else, but wrecked spacecraft.  The images were by a number of different artists from the time and each was accompanied by a brief fiction describing the story that led to the image.  I guess because the book wasn't mine, I never really got enough time to satisfy my interest in it.  I would steal a few minutes pouring through it every time I visited my cousin.  I never asked my parents for a copy, my cousin was pretty well to do and I always assumed the book was outside of my parents price range.  But the images of those derelict space craft became very core in my psyche.   I spent a long time trying to develop my manual art skills so that I could make my own images, but I was never satisfied with the results.  Then in the late 1980's I started seeing computer generated art.  I was intrigued by the ability to create such realistic images.   When I started college in the late 1990's I wanted to work with computers.  Unfortunately the college focused on more traditional media and it wasn't until after my graduation that they introduced a computer art course.   I bought a student copy of 3DStudio and worked for some time to try creating the images that were in my head.  The challenge of doing it was 1990's era software was nearly insurmountable and in time, I gave up.  Now today, the software is more powerful and more affordable than ever and I'm back to trying once again to create the images that are in my head.