Ornery Messes With The Inkling

[ornery]

I recently acquired the fancy new Wacom Inkling, and will hence satisfy all of your curiosities as to whether its worth getting, does it do all that it claims to do, what issues does it have, can it make you a sandwich and then preform mind blasting fellatio, etc.
Join me as I nitpick the ever loving shit out of this contraption.

ACQUISITION
This thing was a bit of a pain to get, I was hoping to get one in early December, but alas, Wacom decided these things would be harder to get your hands on than greased silicone ass implant. They don't sell them in stores, they don't even sell them on Wacom's own official website store. Instead the only way to get them (in the US) is go to Amazon and order one for $200 ... if they are even in stock there. Which upon attempting to order in December they were not. Alas I waited till about a week ago for them to reappear in stock and managed to snag one.
Fun side note; if you are in Europe, the EU Wacom site sells them out of their own store, but again, limited stock.
The Inkling arrived 5 days early last night, and I was eager to try it out. So eager that I went rock climbing for 4 hours and then to a friends place to watch "Americas Funniest Home Videos" till 3 AM. (the thing takes 3 hours to charge anyway).

OUT OF THE BOX
First impressions, the pen was a bit bigger than I am used to (keep in mind I work mainly with chunks of pastel and thin pencils) its a bit thicker than our average tablet pen, but weighs about the same.
*PROBLEM #1* - Right away I pick up the pen annnnndddd... the ink cartridge falls out. Stick it back it, randomly falls out again. Repeat a few times, finally get it to stay, it hasn't done it again since.

The overall carrying/charging case is very nice and compact though, can easily be carried anyway.
And thats when I noticed...
*PROBLEM #2* - Sweet mother of fuck the USB cable they give you is tiny, I know you don't have to use it only and can use a regular one, but this thing is way to short to be of any practical use on a desktop computer when you want to calibrate it. (its about a foot long)

Again minor problems, not worth deterring anyone from getting it or using it (unless you are a mac user in which case if something isn't 100% perfection designed its not worth your smug shit eating face, then you can forget buying this and continue being a waste of human skin)

I will say one thing though, the instruction booklet it gives you it pretty crap as far as how to use it, but anyone with half a brain can figure it out. (again unless you are a mac user and wouldn't know how to do anything that isn't handed to you on a chrome plastic case)

DRAWING TIME! :D
I start by tracing over the line work I did on a piece that I never finished (and barely started) just to see what it handles like. Clip the sensor to the paper (it can read a max of about 8.5x11 paper size wise), press the pen down and...
...fuck me sideways this is like a real ballpoint pen. It needs that cunting scratching shit to get the ink going....
I get the ink flowing, and on paper it actually acts quite similar to a slightly nicer Bic pen, so + there for you ballpoint pen artists. I trace quickly over my piece, plug the receiver into the comp, install the software annnndd....
...this is what comes out. What. The. Fuck?
.... so apparently i was holding the pen wrong, or my hand got in the way, or what I feared happened happened and it didn't register my touch like most tablets do, or all of the above. (it was combo of the first 2, this thing actually has really really good pressure sensitivity.)

TRY #2
Now I try doing stuff simple, a few blocks and circles just to test, paper flat as opposed to slanted, not moving anything annndd....
... pretty good results, holding the pen properly for me is a bit awkward, but that stems more from my horrible habit of never holding any pen right so this will just take a tiny bit of getting used to.
Next step is try it slanted.
Worked just fine, even moving the board around, as long as you dont bump the sensor you are fine.

THE SOFTWARE
It works, its easy, it does what it needs to. Which is to take your drawing and stick it on the comp and let you save it or export it to Photoshop or Illustrator. Anyone who doesn't know how to use it must be a mac user. It also lets you view your drawing in process through a little time lapse animation.
You can also plug the receiver into the comp, stick a sheet of paper under it and use it as a regular tablet, but its kinda limited in those aspects and I wouldn't really recommend it.
I do have one complaint though. I don't know if its incapable of it, or if i just haven't experimented enough, but it doesn't seem to have any way to make varying line weights translate when you draw. Doesn't matter if you press hard or soft, when you put it in the comp everything is same weight.

OVERALL
Its overall a great product. It is definitely quicker than drawing something and scanning it in, then fucking with it to get the values and shit right. Hell it took 3 times as long taking the pics of the original pieces and uploading them than it did getting the Inkling drawings onto the comp and into PS or AI.
Would I use it to make finished pieces alone? Dear god no. Will it help me, a traditionally trained artist who works better on paper where i can see what I am drawing directly instead of once removed through a screen, get their stuff up digitally? Hell yes.

I plan on using it mainly as something to make line art with then work on that on the comp as I slowly work more digitally. Yes the tiniest of details don't show up, but I would say its a .95 - 1 translation (not quite 1-1, but close enough that you shouldn't care).

So in conclusion, its worth getting if you can think of a use for it or like sketching traditional and then finishing digital. It does what it says, it works, its simple, its small, its super portable, i can fit it in my pocket and draw on napkins at restaurants if i felt like it. (huge huge huge bonus over any tablet shitty smart phone drawing program or laptop).

But it doesn't make sandwiches and its fellatio skills are kind of dry and pointy.

If you guys have anything you want to see done with it, or tests you want me to run with it I will gladly oblige.

[leocartoon1]

Hmmm, it seems good except for the fact that it doesn't vary the weight of the lines. That's kinda a shame for those who would like to make drawings with bold lines (cartoons for example) but are instead left with a line that's more suitable to technical drawings.

[ornery]

At 1/11/12 04:42 PM, leocartoon1 wrote: Hmmm, it seems good except for the fact that it doesn't vary the weight of the lines. That's kinda a shame for those who would like to make drawings with bold lines (cartoons for example) but are instead left with a line that's more suitable to technical drawings.

You can vary the line weight. Make it all thicker, or all thinner. My complaint was more that you cant have one line that have both thick and thin in it. It seems to be all or nothing. I'm still messing with it though to see if maybe I missed some feature.

[spammer4life]

are you going to carry it around with you?
im asking because i think it seems really cool. But i just dont beleive i would ever remeber it or have big enough pockets to carry it with me.

[Kinsei]

inkling

....BLARG IWANT-IWANT-IWANT!!!!!
....
Control yourself man!
...ok..

Yay Orn. Glad to have a nice insider review of the Inkling. This is great!

One of the questions I have it in the area of the type of line it produces digitally.
What I want to know is if the line in Illustrator is a path stroke, or considered a shape of its own.

The reason I want to know is because with a shape instead of a path, I can have more control over it and in the way I edit the line.

I could check this myself if you sent me the Illustrator file the Inkling software produces, but the dump sucks and doesn't accept Illustrator files... aw poo... gotta get Tom to fix that.

Although, now that I think of it, I know of a way to convert strokes to shapes.... Good thing I was waiting on Illustrator to open to make an example or I would have posted and then looked like an Idiot for remembering afterwords.

[ornery]

At 1/11/12 05:01 PM, Kinsei01 wrote: One of the questions I have it in the area of the type of line it produces digitally.
What I want to know is if the line in Illustrator is a path stroke, or considered a shape of its own.

The reason I want to know is because with a shape instead of a path, I can have more control over it and in the way I edit the line.

Don't know the difference between the two, and I have to save it as a .svg file because my version of illustrator is ballstarded and doesn't allow for direct import. But it looks like it might be a shape if i had to guess.

[Vonschlippe]

Hey! Thanks a lot for writing this!!

I was kind of excited when I saw the first trailers showing what the thing can do, but the more I think about it the more I realise that I'm a lot more comfortable doing the CG from scratch or from a scanned drawing. I am still not sure what I would gain from this tool, especially since it does not register varying line thickness.

I will pass on this tool, maybe save some money for the latest generation of wacom cintiq... one day.

SOON.

[Lintire]

At 1/11/12 04:48 PM, ornery wrote: You can vary the line weight. Make it all thicker, or all thinner. My complaint was more that you cant have one line that have both thick and thin in it. It seems to be all or nothing. I'm still messing with it though to see if maybe I missed some feature.

I think you may have misinterpreted what he said (or you didn't and he just asked something else entirely). Judging from your sketches, and I don't know if this is just because you're unfamiliar with tablets, it seems to be missing a certain ability that I consider one of the paramount attributes to any tablet: pressure sensitivity.

I personally love to have my tablet respond to my touch as it performs dry, pointy fellatio. In fact I can't work without it.

But enough about that. From a traditional artist's perspective, sounds like a nifty little product, and far better then the very, very bad tablets I've had the displeasure of working with. I wouldn't get it myself, but only because I'm at the point where working with a traditional tablet is completely natural.