Inks

I've just read an interesting blog about inking - for once written by a reader, and not an inker or penciler.
 http://benjaminherman.wordpress.com/2013/03/27/thinking-about-inking-the-role-of-comic-book-inkers/

 I don't considere myself as a good inker. I'm not, even, an inker : I'm able to ink my own work, but that's pretty much it. To be honest, my last attempts at inking Greg Capullo or anybody else was, for the best, awful and crappy.
 Except Troy 'Don't' Zurel - and I was only coloring after him, I've never worked with an inker and, I have to say, I absolutely don't know what my art could look like properly inked.
 Thus said, inkers are by the most important artists in the comic book industry. Of course, without writers and pencilers, you couldn't read those comics. But inkers, man! They just give it the feeling!
 Give a bad pencil work to a good inker, and the reader will be thrilled.
 Give a good pencil work to a bad inker, and it will just be disgusting.

 Let me explain :
 Here is a before and after view of the same panel, coming from Apes With Uzis - Arc & Chain : Thugs Electro, page 18.
 Pretty clear, hu?

 I work a lot my pencils : specially here, since Mark Bertolini, the writer, loves to see the progression. Also, it makes things clearer for him and Rolf Lejdegard to see what I have in mind, and if I properly follow the script.
 But, still. With no doubt, the inked panel is way more dynamic, and filled with hundreds of tiny details. Most of them will be near invisible once the book printed, but their absence would be noticiable.
 All those little, tiny things also add lots of effects : the rust and the dust, reflections on the metal... Many things that are just annoying to do when you're penciling your page. I don't always fill the blanks when penciling. As many, the "x" technics is way faster and easier. See the grey filled parts in the penciled version? Imagine just some few lines, with dozains of "x" marking the black parts.
 It's something we usually do when we need to work fast. Sometimes, I just try to make my layouts clean as possible, and directly ink over them (that's what I do, for a matter of style, on Satanic Hell and, sometimes, on USS Indianapolis).

 I have absolutely no idea what that page could have looked with any other inker. Imagine it inked by Troy Zurel, Jonathan Glapion... I think it's closer from what could have done Danny Miki, a few years ago (and without any knowledge of inking, of course). I think that amount of details was a kind of his signature, and a part of his style.
 Because the ink work is definitely not just "tracing". It's an interpretation of the artist's style. The inker have to understand the penciler's style, feel it, and render it WITH his own style.
 That's why the best inkers are also great pencilers : they have just chosen to ink. I'm not ashamed : Jonathan Glapion and Danny Miki are better artists that I am. They have a natural understanding of the lines, their effects...

 Anyway... Time to go back to a new page of AWU.
 See ya next time!