The moment my tablet pen died mid-stroke on a 4 hour render

I was sitting in my home office Wednesday night, working on this big digital painting I'd been building for three days straight. About 2 hours in, my tablet pen just stopped responding halfway through a shading pass on the hair. I thought it was a driver issue at first, spent 20 minutes restarting the software and checking connections. Then I realized the battery was completely dead and I didn't have a spare. Ended up having to use my old mouse to finish the line work, which felt like going back to 2005. The pressure sensitivity was gone, so the stroke quality came out all jagged and uneven. I had to redo that whole section the next morning when I got new batteries. Has anyone else had a project get wrecked by something as dumb as dead AA's?

2 comments

2 Comments

troyreed1mo ago

Ask @jesser79 if losing that file pushed them to switch to wireless or if they just started keeping backup batteries nearby. Dead batteries always seem to hit at the worst possible moment, right when you're in a flow state and not thinking about hardware. I keep a four-pack of AAs taped to my monitor stand now because of nights just like yours.

jesser791mo ago

I lost an entire Photoshop file back in 2010 because of a dying CR2032 battery in my graphics tablet...