Disaster!

Fate farts in my face once again!

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working really hard on my webcomic.

To be completely honest, it’s the first thing I’ve done in a loooong while that’s outside my comfort zone, where I’ve actually been really pleased with the results. I honestly expected to draw a few strips and then just shelve them until I learned to draw well enough to get them to match up to my expectations.

Instead they all exceeded my expectations. Don’t get me wrong, no one will look at them and be amazed by the artwork, but they’re a lot better than I thought they’d be.

So yesterday, I decided to ink a few more of them. So I scanned them into photoshop, plugged in my handy graphics pad and…

What the hell?

Turns out my stylus is broken. More precisely, the pressure sensitivity has gone totally haywire. It just can’t decide whether I’m pressing down as hard as I can or not actually touching the pad.

Instead of a nice smooth line with a touch of thin-to-thick I’m getting a long broken line that looks like it was drawn with a dodgy fountain pen being used by someone with a very bad case of the shakes.

Oh well, for a fifty dollar graphics pad that’s given me over four years of perfect and almost constant use I can’t really complain…especially considering a Wacom tablet that’s half the size of mine would actually cost about six times more.

What I can complain about is the difficulty in ordering a replacement stylus.

Turns out that Medion, the company behind my graphics pad, don’t sell spares.

However, it also turns out that Medion isn’t the manufacturer. My Medion Graphics pad is basically a re-badged Trust 1200-V2. Apparently, I can get a replacement stylus from them for ten euros…but they’re not the most helpful bunch in the world.

I sent them an email asking if they sold replacement pens. I got a one sentence reply that said “Yes, we do sell replacements”.

So I emailed them again, asking how to get one because I didn’t see any available to order on their website.

I got a response saying “You can order them from us for ten euros plus shipping”

Yeah, but how?

I emailed again, this time being incredibly specific in what I needed to know…no response.

Ain’t life grand?