For a long time, whenever I wanted to do any graphics on the computer, I used PC-Paintbrush 4 by ZSoft. It was a good program, and back in the late 80's, it was one of the most powerful that was available to computers running MS-DOS.

Though it was very good, some of the tools you would take for granted in a piece of graphics software were unavailable. When my Dad picked up Windows 3.1, I began exploring some of the programs that came with it and found one called Paint. Microsoft Paint was a joint effort between the people at ZSoft and the folks at Microsoft, looked a lot like PC-Paintbrush, and was an absolute piece of shit - unless you wanted to do a flow chart with the 3 primary colors you were pretty much out of luck, and so I kept using PC-Paintbrush.

Then, a year or two later, I learned how to use my Dad's modem.

At the time, a 2400 baud modem was cutting edge, and on a BBS that had a ton of shareware, I found a program called Neopaint. It's one of the most impressive DOS raster-graphics programs I've ever seen, and it rapidly became the program I used most.

One day in 1994 I discovered that unlike other programs I'd used, where if you wanted to draw a curved line you would just click in the general direction you wanted the curve to go and pray you got it right the first time, Neopaint sported a variation on 'splines.' Splines allow you keep adjusting your curve's shape until you're exactly happy with it. I began to experiment with this marvelous feature, and after about half an hour I ended up with a cool shape, which I then embellished upon and colored in. I still can't tell what it is, but it's always reminded me of the Rocketeer's helmet.