Catching a Vision 004
Learning the Craft: Inking
Catching a Vision, the weekly column on Comic Related from C. Edward Sellner, Founder and Creative Director of Visionary Comics Studio, provides practical guidance on how to break into the comics industry, as well as insights into this medium we all love. With resources you can order online, interviews and debates with comic professionals, and online workshops, this is your best introduction into the wonders of creating comics!
Well, as you might guess we're following a comic through its stages of production to identify each of those arenas, so first we dealt with writing, wherein a script is first created. We then went into penciling the pages of said script. Which brings us logically to the third stage...COLORING! Umm, no, sorry, INKING! Well, maybe inking.
The Challenges...
The above illustrates my main point about this particular arena...it might be something of an endangered profession in comics.
To understand why, we need to go back into comics' history a bit and talk about technology. In the old days (and I'm going to spare you a lot of the more technical mumbo jumbo) comics were printed with an old-fashioned print press. In the normal process of creating comics, inking was critical because the fact of the matter was that a penciled page just DID NOT reproduce for printing. If you wanted to lay in colors, well, then inking was even more important to define those clean lines for color plates to be added in. The old process had far more limitations and inks on a page were the means by which a page could be printed legible with detail, clean work, etc.
In that period then inking comic art was a necessary craft in order to achieve the finished product. This didn't prevent it from sometimes drawing fire even then however. Under the constant deadline driven world of comics, it often made sense to divide the art into two jobs, assigned to two different people, penciling and inking. The penciler focused on layout, anatomy, composition, etc. in creating the page, then handed it off to the inker. Depending on the penciler / inker relationship, these could range from light, half-finished pencils, to fully and tightly rendered ones. The inker then brought the page through to a finished piece.
All fine and dandy. But at its heart, you're then having someone else 'mess' with another person's art! Remember, this was in the days when ALL inking was done manually, meaning with the application of ink onto an actual page, a pretty final process. If you look at original art from comics in those days, you see inked pages more than likely, because the inks were applied onto the actual pencils. Some inkers did use a slightly different process, where they would ink on vellum paper laid over the pencils, but this was more an exception than the rule.
I remember reading in interviews from certain pencilers how they HATED such and such an inker, or how others would ONLY work with certain inkers who did 'justice' to their art. Still others complained that they thought inkers should not get one-third of the original art from a book (some company policies back in the day) because they had been able to 'trace' the pencils. Ouch.
It's a tough challenge to take pencils that one artist has labored over and then add your own touch as an inker, while focusing on your job: to enhance and improve the function of the art and the art itself. See, a lot of people assume inking IS just 'going over the pencils' with ink. Well, surprise, it's not. It accomplishes a lot more than just the technical need to have pages be able to print.
Enter the digital age! With computers and ever improving technology, print has moved almost exclusively into digitally formatted files and digital process printing. In other words, you can scan in a high resolution image of light pencils, and then print that image in a comic book and it will look almost identical to the original art. Add to that that coloring is now pretty much exclusively done on computer, except for various artistic reasons, not functional ones, which means a colorist can go in and add color directly over those scanned pencils! Oh, oh...no more technical need for an inker from a printing perspective.
I've seen comics printed with just pencil art, others with digital color added straight over the pencils and no inking done at all. Does this mean that inking has gone the way of the dinosaur? It seemed like it for a while, but hopefully not. Inking does add far more than an outdated technical need. It seems publishers have taken note of that and while it seemed for a brief while every book was trying to go to straight from pencils to colors, most now have settled with keeping inked artwork for quality and artistic reasons.
So what is it that inking can bring to a page artistically?
The Basic Mechanics: Weight and Definition
First and foremost, when folks realized that there was no longer a technical need for inking to get a printed book, they didn't as quickly realize that the human eye and mind has some things in common with those older style print presses. The fact is a clear, well-defined black line says to the human eye and mind that this is a border, it defines the end of a thing. Even more, varying the thickness of that black line sends the message that a thing with a thicker border is closer to us than a thing with a thin border.
Some of the original efforts of going straight to color over pencils failed to take this into account. Pencil lines were subdued and muddied under the colors and while the coloring took into account shadow and light, edges and such, it did not define the figures or background nearly as well as inked lines. Backgrounds especially tended to wash together into a colorful pattern that lacked any depth or substance. The result were quite a few books, even from top publishers that looked washed out, flat and, well, crappy.
See, inking IS more than tracing the pencils. No matter how proficient an artist is with a pencil, they are never going to produce quite as clean a line. Most traditional comic pencilers are also trained, if not intentionally then by sheer unconscious practice, to pencil art that NEEDS to be inked. Meaning they don't add weight and depth to their line-work to clearly delineate foreground, mid-ground and background. This after all, has always been the job of the inker.
Which brings us to the two most important aspects of inking...
An inked line, clear, smooth, or even jagged and rough still provides a far clearer definition of line than a penciled line. Weighted lines that go from very thick (in the foreground) to very faint and thin lines (in the background) unconsciously to the reader's mind and eye add depth. The thicker lined object 'reads' in our mind as closer, having more 'weight' if you will, whereas the thinner lines give it less weight, or pushes it back into space.
Thus inkers make the artwork POP off the page!
But That Ain't All...
Inking, when done right IS an art form in itself. I think of all the skills in comics inking is probably one of the least appreciated (along with lettering) and possibly one of the least understood (as is editing).
The professional inker is something of a contradiction. Inkers will have fan-bases made up of those folks who are more understanding and appreciative of the work and skill that goes into it, but often not the more casual fans who just look at art as being 'cool'. They get to do art, but there are very few people who seem to be clamoring to be comic book inkers; the job just is not as glamorous, because, again, to the casual fan, it's often not really understood.
Now, on one hand, since there are not thousands of folks lining up to ink comics, this is an easier path to break into comics, less peer competition. However, with the increase in books that feature painted art, or have learned to better utilize pencils and colors to create the same definition as inked pages, there are fewer opportunities to have regular inking work.
While it is not always true, many quality inkers are also just quality artists period and inking is simply one of their specialties. Inking itself does not require the same skill set as penciling, but does require a solid artistic eye and skill set to do it right. Inkers are often called upon to fix errors in penciled artwork, so they need to be able to apply that artistic skill beyond going over existing pencils. They also need to be able to effectively use the weight, style, and form of the inked line to make their work stand out as well if they hope to succeed as a comics pro.
An inker also needs to have proficient skills in the use of their tools, such as brushes, rapidographs, nib nosed pens, or in this day and age, their Wacom Tablet. Like many other arenas in comics, inking has gone mostly digital. Despite that period of time when the 'digital age' almost drove the art form into extinction, it too has evolved. As a result, penciled art is sent in hi-resolution files, where the inker then digitally inks the art mostly using some type of tablet hardware and software such as Wacom.
But whatever the tools or means, they have to be able to lay down clear, bold and decisive lines. They have to be really good at adding weight to line-work to make foreground figures pop but background figures still be clear. They also have to often translate pencil shading, with almost infinite tonal shades, into inked lines which create the same effect. This may entail using crosshatching, feathering lines, stipling or other means to give a sense of shadow, depth, texture etc.
Not to mention, the inker is often working under the toughest critic any comic creator can work under...the artist whose work they are 'messing with'!
Thus, which I'm sure should come as no surprise to readers of this column, aspiring inkers should ensure they put in the effort to really learn their craft before trying to break into comics as a professional inker. So, learn the tools, experiment with all of them. Learn the skills and apply them.
Comic book inking is still an important facet of the creative process and a good addition to making a solid comic (yes, another bad pun), so hopefully it's one that will continue to thrive in our little industry.
Below I've included my usual... book recommendations for aspiring inkers to learn the craft and some online resources as well. Not as many this time because inking is a pretty comic specialized art form, so there is not so many with a general approach to the craft itself, than another slew for comics only. Nevertheless, these are great resources, so check them out!
If you're serious and interested in investing in a Wacom tablet, there is also a link to order the materials needed on Amazon as well. Check it out.
You will also note there are several pages of direct comparison, from penciled pages, to inked pages scattered through this column. These were pulled from various portfolios of Visionary Comics Studio's inkers, in order to show the difference you get when ink is added. Impressive, huh?
BOOKS...
ONLINE RESOURCES...
Creating Comics by Dave Law, yes, I know, I really should try to get paid for referrals. Inking is lumped under "Artists" and when you click on inking on the site, it takes you to one...whole...article. But some of the other resources can also apply as well.
HARDWARE / SOFTWARE...
Or if you're interested in doing more direct research...
Check out Wacom's Main Site.
Next...
Hey, the promised interviews have begun hitting the CR site! I've gotten everything from both Jeff Loew and Josh Williamson, Jeff's has already debuted and I think both promise to be very informative and helpful! On top of that, I've got a great in-depth interview with comics legend Pat Broderick coming up soon, hitting around the time we make some major announcements about Pat's triumphant return to comics. Don't miss that one!
Next week, in this regular space, we're going to add some color to this column, well, at least some tips on Learning the Craft of Coloring! Come and bring your digital crayons.
Join the discussion and add your thoughts on this edition, or the column in general. If you have any questions or suggestions for resources, post them or email them to Sellner so they can be included in future columns. Are you an aspiring or up and coming creator and would like to share your story? Email Sellner and let him know who you are and what you've done.
C. Edward Sellner is the co-founder and Creative Director of Visionary Comics Studio, a studio that within its first two years has drawn high praise from the media and attracted the attention of legendary creators in the comics industry. They have been digitally and print published in the mainstream market and their creators currently work with over a dozen different publishers. Their work has been featured on television news shows, radio programs and internet podcasts as well as featured in every major comics news site online.
Contact him directly at cedwardsellner@aol.com
You can find him at...
Comic Related Forums
Facebook
MySpace
ComicSpace
Visionary Comics Studio
The official site of the Studio where Sellner serves as Creative Director.
Visionary's Networking Sites:
VCS' Facebook Group
VCS' MySpace Page
VCS' ComicSpace Page
Catching A Vision
Check Out Past Columns
blog comments powered by Disqus