Surely you could just put this bad boy at the top of your desk and draw straight onto the desk (without the use of ink obviously) and make your desk into a giannntttt tablet! Or is that not how it works? Either way, being able to sketch away all day and upload with such easy (and vectors!) looks awesome!
Surely you could just put this bad boy at the top of your desk and draw straight onto the desk (without the use of ink obviously) and make your desk into a giannntttt tablet! Or is that not how it works? Either way, being able to sketch away all day and upload with such easy (and vectors!) looks awesome!
as early testers already stated the size of your canvas can be up to the size of one a4 sheet of paper
I think this thing looks great. Decent price too. I always have a computer around, both laptop and desktop, but I think this would be a great addition. I really like to draw in bed, just around when I go to sleep. It would be awesome to have a fast, convenient way to transfer that to my computer. Scanning is a pain in the ass, and no tablet gives the same feel as a pen and paper do.
I'll wait for v2, I wish it supported a larger area and had a real time option so you could bring the inkling instead of a full tablet with you on the go.
This translates into games and film as well with storyboard artists being able to sketch and few cells then rather then ink them they can just open ai and translate them to paper with vector traceouts.
Gotta admit that I am curious about the vector output. I really want to find ways to do quick, clean lineart digitally but the only thing that seems to work okay for me so far is the vector/stroke tool in photoshop
Besides that, for whoever is interested by the regular "scanning" feature, its out there already :
Here's a video showing how it functions. My first reaction is that its going to be very awkward to use. You must maintain constant line of sight with the pen tip and the sensor. Imagine for a moment a piece of string tied to the pen, the other end tied to the sensor. Now try to draw something and never have your hand cross that piece of string.
Maybe I'm just crappy at drawing, but it seems weird to me.
Slum I totally agree with you - I find it always a bit strange how many of us tend to just go "omg this is going to be so awesome!" even tho the tech has some obvious (and strong) limitations!
I feel like this will indeed sell like crazy but the practicality problems will arise very quickly. I actually think that it might sell a lot to people who don't draw much on traditional media anymore, and kinda forgot that gesture and paper rotation are such an important parts of the process...
Pretty pricey too ...
I would love to see Wacom produce some sort of A4 copy pad (of intuos thickness) holding a piece of regular paper, registering the strokes made by any pen or pencil. A kind of digital carbon copy paper, so to speak. Now that would be sweet!
Here's a video showing how it functions. My first reaction is that its going to be very awkward to use. You must maintain constant line of sight with the pen tip and the sensor. Imagine for a moment a piece of string tied to the pen, the other end tied to the sensor. Now try to draw something and never have your hand cross that piece of string.
Maybe I'm just crappy at drawing, but it seems weird to me.
I thought this looked interesting until I read that. This thing is now firmly in "I don't give half a crap" territory.
When I'm drawing, I turn my pen/pencil/lump of burnt dung every whichway so I can get the best line quality possible. Not being able to do that would be a huge detriment to anything I was trying to do.
here's a link to all the vids, #6 is pretty sick, it even records it so you can play it back on your pc, im assuming people posting tutorials will like that.
i'm not sure but the fact that i can create layers is pretty sick, scanners cant do that but i see the point most of you guys are saying..
Im using a tablet pc 2hours every day when traveling to work, so this kind of portable tool should be usefull, but:
well, to me it looks like an nintendo DS like tablet, nothing too fancy, but nothing too amazing in term of power.
The only plus from a tablet pc is the ability to use it when its sunny... like in vacation or something.
You will say the price, but right now you can find a tablet pc at the same price and of course, the more you pay, the more you can do (zbrush by train?).
Do I realy need vectors? well not so much but ctrl Z!
This seems like it could be really cool, in a few revisions. I think I'm done with being an early adopter, especially with tech I don't absolutely need. I really don't enjoy drawing with a ballpoint pen. I'd much prefer a pencil or like Pior said a pad that can use any instrument.
Im using a tablet pc 2hours every day when traveling to work, so this kind of portable tool should be usefull, but:
well, to me it looks like an nintendo DS like tablet, nothing too fancy, but nothing too amazing in term of power.
The only plus from a tablet pc is the ability to use it when its sunny... like in vacation or something.
You will say the price, but right now you can find a tablet pc at the same price and of course, the more you pay, the more you can do (zbrush by train?).
Do I realy need vectors? well not so much but ctrl Z!
my 2cent...
If we turn it around: the upsides are portability and ability to create vectorized and layered work without being anywhere near a computer, and downsides being that the IR-tech used will get you into situations where you have to make sure you're not covering the receiver.
I would love to know where you can get a tablet pc for $199 though.
Still, I'm a bit intrigued by the possibility to place a dummy ballpoint pen in it and just use that and the receiver to have a pad-free tablet that you can place on any surface as long as you don't obstruct the IR.
If we turn it around: the upsides are portability...
judging by the fact that this thing need a 2cm dead zone, and uses IR, I'd say there is some sort of triangulation involved to determine pens position. This means that mounting that receiver on a notepad and then bending it even slightly, while you traveling in a bus for example, most likely will create a mess of whatever it is you drawing. So not so much for portability, unless you can carry a desk with you. At lease these are my fears regarding that device.
judging by the fact that this thing need a 2cm dead zone, and uses IR, I'd say there is some sort of triangulation involved to determine pens position. This means that mounting that receiver on a notepad and then bending it even slightly, while you traveling in a bus for example, most likely will create a mess of whatever it is you drawing. So not so much for portability, unless you can carry a desk with you. At lease these are my fears regarding that device.
I would think a regular hardback sketchpad should be enough, but we'll see I guess.
Super interesting, but they seem really hard to get, I would love to have something new released equally underpowered but sketchable (with pressure levels) at that price point.
wierd idea, not sure where wacom are going with this one. Like what is the point of having layers if you cant see them in a list or turn them on and off etc? i guess its just for people who decide they want to save thier drawing to a layer before adding a new face on it or something?
While I'd like a chance to just test this, I don't see myself buying it, if anything I'd rather wait for a cheap and nice tablet with proper pen support. Oh wait I forgot I don't leave my comp+intuos anyway, so nevermind
Layers don't mean much to me either if I don't have control over them right away (switching on off, xforming, masking etc) rather than after I'm done drawing o.O
Also, I've got to ask, how many of you sketch in pen, and if you do what kind of line thickness differentiation are you achieving with increased/decreased pressure?
I sketch in pencil and can get some pretty decent line variation (especially using a .07 or .09 mm lead).
there's an early impression post in Russian from illustrator, who's tested inkling for about 15 minutes
(google translate link, not really accurate but better than nothing)
main points -
1) pen feels weird, supposed to get better over the time;
2) data receiver, that has to be sticked to the paper, is getting on nerves quite a bit, also adds extra weight to paper; you need to drag a bunch of devices around all the time too;
3) lag and/or misplaced strokes if you're drawing too quickly. you don't see the f-ups until you transfer images to PC. supposed to be better for people whose drawing tempo is slower.
4) low battery life, usb only charging. will require a separate usb-charger unless you have an usb port available all the time (she doesn't)
5) 16 euro price tag for official wacom pen refills. ewwww.
I was quite excited about this gadget myself, not so sure now tho
there's an early impression post in Russian from illustrator, who's tested inkling for about 15 minutes
(google translate link, not really accurate but better than nothing)
main points -
1) pen feels weird, supposed to get better over the time;
2) data receiver, that has to be sticked to the paper, is getting on nerves quite a bit, also adds extra weight to paper; you need to drag a bunch of devices around all the time too;
3) lag and/or misplaced strokes if you're drawing too quickly. you don't see the f-ups until you transfer images to PC. supposed to be better for people whose drawing tempo is slower.
4) low battery life, usb only charging. will require a separate usb-charger unless you have an usb port available all the time (she doesn't)
5) 16 euro price tag for official wacom pen refills. ewwww.
I was quite excited about this gadget myself, not so sure now tho
You can use any refill that fits the standard though, so you wont have to buy wacoms own refills.
Alright all, I just realized that after the hype wore off, very few actually bought the device Somehow the Wacom marketing has gone very quiet - most likely because of the bad reviews out there.
So ... I got one earlier this week. I was really pleased at first, until it flat out stopped working for multiple reasons. Now it's back in its box and ready to be sent for refund Re-posting my Amazon 1-star review below. I can upload some sketches if needed ; however, the main problems actually lie outside of the lack of stroke accuracy. Brace yourself!
I recently ordered the Inkling (Jan 2012) after much pondering.
I read and watched many reviews - some by tech enthusiasts simply messing around with the device, and some more insightful ones by artists who actually used the device for what it was intended for. Therefore the hype was long gone when I received the product and I knew what I was going to get. I am used to other Wacom devices (Graphire, Intuos 2 to 4 and Cintiq) and knew that the Inkling was something quite different by nature.
As mentioned everywhere (and now as openly acknowledged by Wacom), the Inkling is not about line accuracy. The marketing videos were very misleading, but a little bit of skepticism and research made it obvious. In short : if you sketch two lines creating one single continuous line on paper, chances are, these two strokes will be disconnected in the Inkling sketch.
Knowing that, the device is great for scribbling. The loose quality is exactly what I was looking for, and the added bonus of the vector nature of the recording actually makes lines even thinner and sharper on screen than they would be on a scan. I was very happy with my first few sketches, and took them to Photoshop right away for extra painting. Great feeling.
However!
- After a while, I started to notice that some sketches were being saved in the receiver in a corrupted state. I could clearly see them saved in the USB directory structure of the device, but the Inkling Sketch Manager wouldn't see or open them and would crash if I ever tried to double click the associated proprietary .WPI file in Explorer.
- Furthermore, it seems like the actual physical port and/or USB cable being used does matter to the device. Some sketches that I could not open with the receiver plugged with a regular mini USB cable coming from a back port of my computer, would open fine if I plugged the receiver to a front USB port, with the cable provided by Wacom (admittedly, this is the port that I used the very first time I used the device). This is a very bad sign already as this is not how USB devices are supposed to work. It speaks very badly of the Inkling drivers and software.
- Last, the Sketch Manager is an intrusive piece of software (on top of being very badly designed). After I installed it on my win7 64 PC, I noticed that the program launched itself on computer startup, even tho I never set it to do so, and even whithout the receiver being plugged in. The software is not present as a "startup" folder item, therefore Wacom used some sneaky practices to make it start up against the user's will. Again, a very bad practice. A forum admin mentioned that a workaround consists of changing the name of the .exe to something else than its original name to trick the startup procedure. Not an acceptable fix...
All in one, the overall bad experience provided by the Inkling far outweighs the pleasure of squeezing out a few non-corrupt sketches out of the device. You can find more problems and information on the user forum :
On the plus side, I loved the shape of the body of the pen - nice and hefty. It made me want to find a nice, solid ball point pen to draw with from now on! Besides that, the Inkling is now back in its box ready to be returned.
Yeah, when my wife read the reviews on Amazon she was crushed. This device was definitely not ready to ship. We're waiting for a few revisions before biting...
Super interesting, but they seem really hard to get, I would love to have something new released equally underpowered but sketchable (with pressure levels) at that price point.
!! Now I have options between:
Motion Computing LS800 and Cintiq 12wx/ 21wx depending on the needs and budget for it.
Right now I am just struggling to upgrade the ram of my computer...
All I want to have or save up for, is a reasonable tablet that can work smoothly for sketching because I am using a board, clipper, sketchbook that contains medium tooth papers, sketchbook that contains standard bristol paper, pigment liners set, 4H HB and 4B leads and lead holders, and a scanner.
Maybe I should just stick with what I have and master everything before I move on to upgrading stuff...=\
Pior, what USB cable you use is not something Wacom can do much about: i've ran into it a few times were cheap, low quality USB cables don't want to read from some devices. I think that's not really Wacom's fault, since it works when you use their cable ( I bet it would work on the back with theirs as well).
Yeah I see your point - but that cable was just fine, and worked with every other device before. To be totally precise there were 2 factors at play here : different cable, and different port. I think the problem came from the USB port being different from the first one I used when I first plugged the device, and I do find this to be unacceptable behavior. The only thing that I need is to access the files to convert them, nothing else ...
Most of the problems come from the Sketch Manager being a terrible piece of software. However, sketches getting corrupted during recording makes one totally loose trust in the product - It only takes one failure to make you feel like it could happen anytime without warning.
Had a go of one of these the other day, enjoyed using it and everything seemed pretty sweet for the lose sketch i did. Theres been some bad reviews and i didnt get enough time to really say whether it would be worth a purchase. Like with most new tech ill probably wait a revision or two before buying
Some more findings ... basically the Inkling is a clone of an older product by IoGear, and the software from the other brand can open corrupted Inklings sketches just fine
Some more findings ... basically the Inkling is a clone of an older product by IoGear, and the software from the other brand can open corrupted Inklings sketches just fine
pathetic.
I'm developing a slow but steady hate on wacom's products and drivers quality these days, what happened to them over the past five or so years.
pathetic.
I'm developing a slow but steady hate on wacom's products and drivers quality these days, what happened to them over the past five or so years.
Is it? Everything I saw talked about OCR for text and scanning images but does it do actual vectors for Illustrator? I mean, I guess it's only $10 but I don't want to buy it if it won't work for what she needs...
Replies
as early testers already stated the size of your canvas can be up to the size of one a4 sheet of paper
this is fine with me. Still awaiting some videos of it in action before being completely sold.
But with custom drivers maybe?
No more bleeding pointers for inking. Thanks to this. Its affordable, and traditionally useable. So it has my vote. =D
Besides that, for whoever is interested by the regular "scanning" feature, its out there already :
[ame]
[ame]
Maybe wacom just slapped some decent vector conversion algorythm on top of such existing tech!
http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=227540
Here's a video showing how it functions. My first reaction is that its going to be very awkward to use. You must maintain constant line of sight with the pen tip and the sensor. Imagine for a moment a piece of string tied to the pen, the other end tied to the sensor. Now try to draw something and never have your hand cross that piece of string.
Maybe I'm just crappy at drawing, but it seems weird to me.
I feel like this will indeed sell like crazy but the practicality problems will arise very quickly. I actually think that it might sell a lot to people who don't draw much on traditional media anymore, and kinda forgot that gesture and paper rotation are such an important parts of the process...
Pretty pricey too ...
I would love to see Wacom produce some sort of A4 copy pad (of intuos thickness) holding a piece of regular paper, registering the strokes made by any pen or pencil. A kind of digital carbon copy paper, so to speak. Now that would be sweet!
I thought this looked interesting until I read that. This thing is now firmly in "I don't give half a crap" territory.
When I'm drawing, I turn my pen/pencil/lump of burnt dung every whichway so I can get the best line quality possible. Not being able to do that would be a huge detriment to anything I was trying to do.
i'm not sure but the fact that i can create layers is pretty sick, scanners cant do that but i see the point most of you guys are saying..
http://www.wacom.com/en/Products/Inkling/Getting-Started.aspx
well, to me it looks like an nintendo DS like tablet, nothing too fancy, but nothing too amazing in term of power.
The only plus from a tablet pc is the ability to use it when its sunny... like in vacation or something.
You will say the price, but right now you can find a tablet pc at the same price and of course, the more you pay, the more you can do (zbrush by train?).
Do I realy need vectors? well not so much but ctrl Z!
my 2cent...
If we turn it around: the upsides are portability and ability to create vectorized and layered work without being anywhere near a computer, and downsides being that the IR-tech used will get you into situations where you have to make sure you're not covering the receiver.
I would love to know where you can get a tablet pc for $199 though.
Still, I'm a bit intrigued by the possibility to place a dummy ballpoint pen in it and just use that and the receiver to have a pad-free tablet that you can place on any surface as long as you don't obstruct the IR.
judging by the fact that this thing need a 2cm dead zone, and uses IR, I'd say there is some sort of triangulation involved to determine pens position. This means that mounting that receiver on a notepad and then bending it even slightly, while you traveling in a bus for example, most likely will create a mess of whatever it is you drawing. So not so much for portability, unless you can carry a desk with you. At lease these are my fears regarding that device.
Yup. Mostly I draw on Intuos 4 mid, when I am home, other times I draw on sketch book(s) that I have and scan them to refine them.
This doesnt change much...Infact, it doesn't change anything at all..=\
I would think a regular hardback sketchpad should be enough, but we'll see I guess.
Judging from the way the tech works, not at all.
Us tip-holders are screwed though.
well, on ebay; check out for a motion computing ls800, it is even cheaper and good enough for sketching...
this video is pretty famous:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrA9UvZtRFA
Super interesting, but they seem really hard to get, I would love to have something new released equally underpowered but sketchable (with pressure levels) at that price point.
While I'd like a chance to just test this, I don't see myself buying it, if anything I'd rather wait for a cheap and nice tablet with proper pen support. Oh wait I forgot I don't leave my comp+intuos anyway, so nevermind
Layers don't mean much to me either if I don't have control over them right away (switching on off, xforming, masking etc) rather than after I'm done drawing o.O
I sketch in pencil and can get some pretty decent line variation (especially using a .07 or .09 mm lead).
(google translate link, not really accurate but better than nothing)
main points -
1) pen feels weird, supposed to get better over the time;
2) data receiver, that has to be sticked to the paper, is getting on nerves quite a bit, also adds extra weight to paper; you need to drag a bunch of devices around all the time too;
3) lag and/or misplaced strokes if you're drawing too quickly. you don't see the f-ups until you transfer images to PC. supposed to be better for people whose drawing tempo is slower.
4) low battery life, usb only charging. will require a separate usb-charger unless you have an usb port available all the time (she doesn't)
5) 16 euro price tag for official wacom pen refills. ewwww.
I was quite excited about this gadget myself, not so sure now tho
You can use any refill that fits the standard though, so you wont have to buy wacoms own refills.
The rest sounded slightly nasty though.
So ... I got one earlier this week. I was really pleased at first, until it flat out stopped working for multiple reasons. Now it's back in its box and ready to be sent for refund
Looks legit and it seems it's going into production now that they have enough money to suppport it.
Thoughts?
!! Now I have options between:
Motion Computing LS800 and Cintiq 12wx/ 21wx depending on the needs and budget for it.
Right now I am just struggling to upgrade the ram of my computer...
All I want to have or save up for, is a reasonable tablet that can work smoothly for sketching because I am using a board, clipper, sketchbook that contains medium tooth papers, sketchbook that contains standard bristol paper, pigment liners set, 4H HB and 4B leads and lead holders, and a scanner.
Maybe I should just stick with what I have and master everything before I move on to upgrading stuff...=\
Most of the problems come from the Sketch Manager being a terrible piece of software. However, sketches getting corrupted during recording makes one totally loose trust in the product - It only takes one failure to make you feel like it could happen anytime without warning.
http://forum.wacom.eu/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=8561
Yay!
pathetic.
I'm developing a slow but steady hate on wacom's products and drivers quality these days, what happened to them over the past five or so years.
im pretty sure its somehow related to China!
as far as i know thats its main selling point?