Watch Scott Adams Draw Dilbert Comic Strip |
 Did
you know that for a while back in the 2005-2008 timeframe, Dilbert creator Scott Adams lost the ability to draw
legibly and to speak intelligibly? It began with a tremor in a finger on his right hand and eventually took even
his ability to speak. Spasmodic
Dysphonia was diagnosed as the culprit. He switched to drawing Dilbert with his left hand until the tremor
migrated there, too. Because of the unsteady hands, Adams had to adapt to drawing on a digitizing tablet rather
than with a pencil. He selected the Cintiq
21UX from Wacom Technology, using Photoshop software. This video shows the master at work. Mercifully, a
combination of surgery and therapy has mostly restored his abilities.Strangely, another manifestation of the disease was that he could only speak in rhymes (or by singing) or while pinching his nose. Of the 30k people afflicted, few recover as remarkably as Scott has. According to an article that used to be posted on a typepad.com location(*), Adams wrote that his voice miraculously returned in 2006. However, if you search now for info on his recovery, you will find that he attributes it to surgery, so maybe he had a relapse. (*) This was the URL, but now it's gone. Here is the Wayback Machine capture of the last page archived. Here is one of the earliest articles on Adams' malady. The timeline doesn't quite jive with Adams' post on his blog. These are the drawing tools that Adams used prior to having to switch to the tablet:
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This archive links to the many video and audio
files that have been featured on RF Cafe.