Using Ergonomic vertical mouse

The Sleight of hand of a digital artist can be marred by the writer's cramp ;) and it's a mess when you have to deliver something urgent (which is always the case with me as a freelance artist).

Being a digital artist I have to use a lot of mouse in a day. Although I use a Wacom Intuos tablet also to do digital painting and illustrations in photoshop and illustrator but there are softwares which require heavy use of mouse such as Autodesk Maya and Final Cut Pro.
During some longer sessions at either of these softwares where I have keep using the buttons pressed and moving things such as footage in timelienes of After effects or Final Cut Pro, or modelling inside Maya... I tend to get what could be termed as "graphic artist's cramp" inspired from the "writer's cramp" . 
Basically it means a painful hand especially the palm, the thumb and/or the wrist. 







I started using the wrist support bands and almost felt like an athlete sitting on computer. At times when pain travelled up to the elbow I would use an elbow support pad as well.
Then I searched about this topic and found many articles and remedies for this.
Not to forget the homeopathic medicine Ruta  G. which gives immediate relief to tired eyes from long computer sessions and relief from wrist pains. I am a homeopathic enthusiast also so keep studying and practising a lot of medicine as well.
Anyways what I was going to suggest in this post was using an ergonomic vertical mouse. I purchased one vertical mouse from Amazon. It is  named Circle Sniper gaming mouse. And after few minutes of use I am finding it very comfortable.
The round button on the top is for quickly improving the cursor speed on screen. I am using the lowest which is the normal cursor speed and sometimes use the middle one. The fastest one is too fast. May be best for gaming sessions. But I am not a gaming person.
So far so good. It feels the mouse should have been designed like this only. And though the vertical mouse looks funny in the beginning almost that one feels one would never be able to use it as a replacement for normal mouse. But as the name suggests, it is actually ergonomic and you will forget that you are using something different as far as usability is concerned. And definitely as they say while using the normal mouse the long bones of our forearm get twisted and remain in that position for a long time which is unnatural and thus causes muscle pain and sometimes serious problems like tennis elbow (yes it can happen even without playing tennis) and the painful Ulnar Nerve disorder.
So, using an ergonomical mouse and keeping Ruta G near you will go a long way.




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