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Doing Digital Art When You Can't Use Your Hand?
Sludge writes "A good friend of mine who is a digital artist was recently involved in a house fire in which he suffered third degree burns to his 'art hand' which have made him unable to handle a mouse or a stylus for the coming months. If you or anyone near you has lost the ability to do something you love due to a physical injury, you know how painful and frustrating it can be. I need help discovering alternative software and input devices he can use while he recovers the ability to use his hand. The programs he uses most are 3dsmax, Z-Brush and Photoshop and he is used to working with a Wacom stylus. What expressive art tools are available that deemphasize precision work with your coordinated hand?"
Is his other hand functional? It would be cheaper to work on being ambidextrous, and that may pay off in the future sometime as well. But if he's not worried about price, then finding a techy solution is definitely the way to go.
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His other hand?
Once he gets that trained and is used to using it, won't it probably be better than trying to use his normal hand with lack of precision? That's what I did anyway when I injured my right hand; I just switched to my left.
Plug in two mice, castrate a ball mouse to use for clicking with one hand while moving the second mouse with whatever part of his "art arm" still works.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
The problem here is that you can't replace precise, experienced control with anything except more of the same. You can do art pixel by pixel using the off-hand and get precision by throwing massive quantities of time at it - and you can do this using the exact same tool set as before. Experience will increase the off-hand precision.
It may be worth making now the time to experiment with new media - you'd be starting from more or less the same point regardless of the injury, so the awkwardness of off-hand manipulation will be less of a factor. It may also be less depressing than facing something you could previously do well, and finding that you no longer can.
penis. what? your's isn't prehensile?
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Ouch! I'm sorry about your friend's situation. I've often found that mice are pretty good for mitigating clumsy hands. For example, when I do really really detailed graphical work in GIMP, I often zoom down to really high levels and work on it a little bit at a time, which gives you a lot of leeway and control. Plus, a lot of programs have ways of mitigating shaky or clumsy hands - bezier tools, for instance, are a godsend to a guy like me whose hands shake constantly (probably due to the 3 Monster drinks I just had).
As far as 3D stuff goes, does your friend know about Sculptris? It's a simple 3D sculpting tool that is able to export to Zbrush (and in fact was just purchased by Zbrush's parent company, Pixologic). It has an option for smoothing out your mouse inputs so that it allows you to make smoother lines and objects in it.
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I had a similar issue. I never thought I could switch hands, but I was desperate. It was awkward for a long time, but it worked. The bonus is that a couple of years later, when my "art hand" had fully recovered, I found that I had two art hands, which has been wonderful
My art teacher in high school had only partially formed limbs, ie. nothing past the elbow or knees. He used prosthetic legs, but did a variety of things to produce art. When drawing or painting, he would slide the pencil or brush underneath his watch wristband. He also did ink drawings by dropping ink on a page with a straw and then blowing the ink around by forcing air through the straw. When painting things like clouds, he would dip the end of his arm into the paint and just put arm to paper. It was quite impressive to see firsthand.
Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler. - Albert Einstein
Everything you've listed except 3dsmax can be easily used with a tablet. When I was struggling with pain in my wrist I wrote TabletMax so that I could model without having to use a mouse. Set the selection type to "lasso" and you'll discover that it's much easier than working with the a tethered brick.
http://3dfolio.com/tools-tabletmax.php
This program was written several years ago and was mainly used with max 7. I think it worked with max 9 last time I checked. It may need to be tweaked to work with newer versions. The source code is included.
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
Have a good friend, Russell who broke both his arms. This might help give a new perspective on the issue.
I don't know if they still promote it for handicapped people, but they did at one time.
It's an infrared head tracker that a lot of people use for flying and driving games. I'm sure other things as well.
They used to have a whole section of their website devoted to handicapped applications.
From their website:
"Eye Control Technologies, Inc. (dba NaturalPoint) was founded in 1997 to develop computer control devices for people with disabilities. Founders Jim Richardson and Birch Zimmer were initially inspired to develop affordable motion tracking technology after Jim’s cousin was completely paralyzed in an accident and could communicate only by moving his eyes."
"During the last several years, engineering breakthroughs have made it possible to introduce ordinary users to the same revolutionary technology that enables people with disabilities to communicate and effectively use their computers. Capitalizing on these breakthroughs, company leaders decided to launch the NaturalPoint SmartNav in order to provide the general public with an affordable alternative to the traditional mouse."
http://www.instructables.com/id/The-EyeWriter/ This might work, but i do not believe he is full paralyzed but i guess if he loses control of his other appendages for some reason...
I got some strange...thing in my hands that makes moving them very painful, mostly the fingers. Drawing became difficult since then, and I can't really use my left hand (same condition) or anything...it's a massive delay in my projects.
Since this started I lost more and more interest on doing anything, since it's just painful and unrewarding.
http://the-gadgeteer.com/2000/08/30/cat_eye_finring_review/
http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/08/genius-ring-mouse-slips-around-your-finger-cues-up-beyonce-jams/
These guys offer various alternative pointing device solutions:
http://www.adapt-it.org.uk/browse_category.asp?id=40&item=Mice
And there are solutions like these out there too:
http://www.fentek-ind.com/nh-mouse.htm
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
"What expressive art tools are available that deemphasize precision work with your coordinated hand?"
Precisely none.
And what kind of a question is that anyhow? "My friend is used to doing precision work, what can I replace that precision work with?". The answer is trivially simple and should be blindingly obvious - you can't replace precision work with anything but precision work. You can retrain the non coordinated hand, eventually, but that's down to the person - the usual Slashdot "t3chn0l0gy ub3r all3s!" answers need not apply.
I worked with a fairly well known illustrator (concept painter) on a movie a few years ago that had an 18" tablet. I didn't even know they went past 12! I asked him why he got one so large and explained to me that his friends injured their wrists by working on fine detail, so he got the extra large tablet so he could use his whole arm to draw. He said it took some getting used to but that his wrists have held up just fine.
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