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The week my tablet pen died mid-project, a story in 3 parts

Last Tuesday my Wacom pen just stopped working in the middle of a client piece for a local cafe in Portland. I spent two days trying to find a replacement nib and another day recalibrating the pressure settings on a borrowed pen. Has anyone else had a tool fail at the worst possible time and had to just push through with a workaround?
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2 Comments
sethmartinez
Oh man, I gotta push back on this one. Honestly, that whole timing thing sounds like a blessing in disguise. Maybe the universe was telling you to step back and rethink the piece before you got too deep into a mediocre version. I've had stuff break and just used a stack of sticky notes and a ballpoint pen for rough layouts, and some of my best work came from that forced slowness. Sounds like you got time to spare if you're recalibrating borrowed gear for two days anyway.
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theabarnes
Double down on that sticky note idea. I've been using index cards tacked to a corkboard for years and it's basically the same thing. There's something about physically moving pieces around with your hands that your brain can't do on a screen. You see connections you'd miss when you're scrolling through layers. Plus it forces you to commit to a layout instead of endlessly tweaking pixels.
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