The Wacom Inkling pen doesn't use special ink, write underwater, or feel mightier than an antiquated weapon. Instead it requires batteries, a special case, and a bit of calibration. But it's probably the most useful pen you could ever own.
Why? Because it will track your every doodle, scribble, stroke, and poke to produce a digital copy of whatever you put on paper. It's designed by Wacom — one of the most popular makers of graphics tablets — and uses the company's pressure-sensing technology to offer 1024 levels of sensitivity. (This means that it will detect even the slightest variations in pressure as you doodle — and reproduce them accordingly in the digital versions of your drawings.)
Now that sounds great, but does it work well — and will you ever really want to use it?
Yes and yes.
Ever since I finished staring at the gadget for two and a half hours while begging it to charge faster for the first time, I've been using it more than I've used any other pen in recent memory.
It takes a few seconds to set up the Inkling — you have to attach a clip-on receiver to the notebook or paper you're using — and you have to avoid obstructing the line of sight between the pen's tip and its receiver so that the ultrasonic and infrared technologies it uses to track pen movements don't get confused. This may sound complicated and annoying, but it came naturally even to this absent-minded doodler (who happens to have a habit of placing her fingers too close to a pen's tip).
As long as you take care of those things, you can proceed to scribble as much as your heart desires — or at least until the Inkling's battery dies or the receiver runs out of memory. (Wacom claims that you'll get up to 15 hours of work out of the pen and up to 8 hours from the receiver while saving "thousands" of sketches. I have struggled to drain the batteries completely between syncs to my computer and have yet to fill up the receiver's memory.)
When you are finished sketching the next Vitruvian Man or designing treasure maps, you'll need to sync the Inkling to your computer in order to retrieve your masterpieces. You can do this by either plugging the receiver directly into your computer using the included cable or by placing it into its carrying case and connecting that instead. (I prefer to use the carrying case during syncs since the pen can be placed into it for a quick charge.)
If it's your first sync, you'll need to install some software — don't worry, both Windows- and Mac-friendly versions are included — but after that retrieving sketches is as simple as opening up the Wacom Sketch Manager.
You can choose to export your work in the form of layered files which are sent directly to Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator or Autodesk Sketchbook Pro. Or if you prefer, you can also save files in JPG, BMP, TIFF, PNG, SVG or PDF formats for use with other applications.
Great! Now you've got all your drawings available in digital form — and if your Inkling experience is anything like mine, they're reasonably accurate and true to their paper counterparts. But what now? What is the point of using the Inkling and creating these files?
I approached my friend Sam Spratt, who is a professional illustrator, with those questions and he managed to avoid laughing at my amateurish trial drawings long enough to explain.
He says that digital graphics tablets — such as the Wacom Cintiq or Intuos — have "been around for quite some time and that while many artists have made the jump to working entirely within the realm of pixels and vectors, plenty still prefer to start their work on paper before scanning it and completing things digitally."
"The Inkling not only skips the scanning process and the flaws that it brings — dust, exposure, and such — but it also cleverly adds two major advancements for artists: Vectors and layers," he continued.
The Inkling's ability to spit out vector graphics is incredibly useful because it means that your drawings are represented by mathematical expressions instead of existing as a grid of pixels (like their counterparts, raster graphics). This means that you'll be able to tweak individual pen strokes or even scale your drawing to the size of a bus — without ever losing quality.
The fact that the Inkling can save work in layered files, Spratt told me, is a huge deal because artists make mistakes:
Let's say I take my notebook and Inkling along on a subway ride and start sketching someone seated across from me. Since he might move around a lot, my first lightly drawn layer would consist of the basic shapes of his face. I don't want to have all that messy preliminary work in the digital version of my sketch, so I'll tap the Inkling's receiver to create a new layer in which I'll begin refining the drawing.
When I import my notebook contents to a computer, I'll be able to look at the individual layers and throw out the ones with the messy initial work. The mistakes which will continue to exist on paper can disappear from the finalized digital version of my subway sketches in seconds.
Not bad, right? Such features should be especially appealing to a new artist, but — as Spratt points out — they could "serve as an affordable bridge between traditional and digital mediums for the pros who really like the feel of pen on paper yet crave the flexibility of digitized drawings."
Now while the Inkling is great when it comes to digitizing your sketches, it also has an extra trick which — in my opinion — isn't advertised enough: It can serve as an additional input device for your computer.
If you're using the gadget while its receiver is plugged into your computer, it switches to "online" mode. In that mode the pen can be used similarly to a mouse or a stylus. (Just don't forget that you do need to have some paper clipped to the receiver!) If you treat it as a stylus, you'll be able to draw almost as if you've got a more traditional Wacom graphics tablet attached to your computer.
Yes, of course you're wasting ink and paper by doing this instead of buying a separate mouse or stylus. And yes, of course the Inkling isn't a replacement for a regular mouse or graphics tablet — but come on! This is a pretty neat bonus feature.
The Inkling's priced at $200 and everything you need — save for the actual paper — is included. (There's a pen, a receiver, 4 spare ink cartridges, all the necessary batteries, a USB cable, and a charging case which will hold all those things.)
Related stories:
- Wacom's new pen display offers 24 inches of digital drawing space
- Why use a mouse when you could use a pen?
- A decent iPad stylus may be on its way
Want more tech news, silly puns or amusing links? You'll get plenty of all three if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on Twitter, subscribing to her Facebook posts, or circling her on Google+.
(If you're more interested in Sam Spratt, the illustrator who kindly shared some of his thoughts for this review, you'll want to try these Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, or Google+ links instead.)
