Today is a sad day for me. This morning at 3am my old Wacom Intous 3 died. 'But Wayne its only a bloody tablet, get over it' you're probably thinking. So why does it need a dedicated blog post? Well that was my 1st 'proper' graphics tablet years back that I bought for my 1st ever DVD (which also happened to be the 1st one released by anyone on Mudbox by the way). Me and that thing have been through a lot.
It's in many ways been a very long quality test of an Wacom Intous! It's been abused in many very horrible ways including:
- · having a total of probably in excess of 1000 cups of coffee split on it.
- · Repeatedly dropped when going through customs by customs guys who seem unable to hold it without dropping it.
- · Stabbed by my then very young son with a pencil, a pen and even a metal rod he found leaving the centre portion dead. This is why old time lapses you see me sculpting things to one side and not centre of the screen lol.
- · Nearly set fire to when I was putting some deodorant on one day and some had landed on it when my cigarette was next to it, making it burst into flames. Amazingly that left it unscathed.
So it's been through a lot and until this early hours it still worked. It helped me produce literally thousands and thousands of models in its lifetime. Although it was no longer my 'number 1' since I got the Cintiq a couple of years back, I still used it on my laptop when downstairs working in the early hours, and it went with me on most of my travels around the world. So its fair to say those Intous tablets are built like tanks. If it can take everything I (and my young son) threw at it, then normal careful use should give it no problem. This is why I recommend it to people when asked.
So RIP Intous 3, I think it is fair to give it a nice rest on my shelf for the rest of its days (or until it gets in my way lol).
