In the mid 70's a young Keith Kasnot was the victim of a serious auto accident: an accident out of which he would find a career. With an undergraduate degree in Fine Arts and a Masters in sculpting, Kasnot had already ascertained where his talents lay. Nevertheless, his convalescence would serve to rekindle a latent fondness for science that would lead him to enroll in the University of Texas Health Science Center's Medical Illustration program.

Medical illustration is a balance of art and science, however, in the case of Kasnot with his unique artistic flare, the scientist rarely overshadows the artist. In his early days in the field it was not merely his unique style that earned him recognition, but also his method of working: Kasnot was one of the first medical illustrators to take up digital media.

While tremendously common in the field today, software for producing medical graphics was quite limited when Kasnot began his career in the mid 1980s. For a number of years his work was painstakingly done on one of the early versions of the Mac. Then, in 1993, he switched to an SGI system running Alias' Power Animator 6. He has stuck with Alias and Alias|Wavefront products since that time, taking up Maya as soon as it was released in 1998. •