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Crippled By Disease, This Artist Found a Way to Keep Drawing

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Francis Tsai is an artist who has worked in comics, film, gaming (tabletop and card) and video games, for clients like EA, Rockstar, DC Comics, Eidos and Marvel.

Widely-published, awarded and respected within the field, he's one of the most talented artists going around.

Sadly, Francis was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's Disease in 2010, a degenerative and paralysing disease for which there is no cure. He quickly lost the ability to use his arms and hands, and hasn't held a pencil since early 2011. While this should have crippled his ability to draw, he soon found that he could use his toes on an iPhone, so began using that to paint images like this.

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When he then lost the use of his toes, he persevered, finding that there was software which could track his eyeballs, which he's using to communicate but via which he also hopes to be able to resume painting.

Francis has been selling shirts and other merch featuring his art on this site, with all proceeds going towards funding his medical care. You can see more of his work in the gallery above, while his personal site is here and his DeviantArt page is here.