Last August Wacom created a bit of buzz announcing a new ballpoint pen called “The Inkling” that records what you write or sketch which can then be imported into your favorite program like Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop or Autodesk Sketchbook Pro.
Rosa Golijan, over at MSNBC’s Gadget Blog reviews the device:
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:
The more detailed review comes from Aegir Hallmundur who posted on his blog Ministry of Type. He’s written about how it lays down a line, the devices signal and recording ability, the software needed, and what a drawing looks like when imported into Photoshop, Illustrator or as SVG.
The Inkling feels very much like a tool for designers more than illustrators. If you sketch rough ideas ? layouts, lettering, schematics and the like, you?ll find it very useful. If you want to record your sketchbook of illustrations, you certainly could, but it might cramp your style having to use that pen – Wacom themselves say it?s good for preparatory drawings, and I agree. I don?t use ballpoints very often for a couple of reasons ? I don?t particularly like the quality of line they offer, and the ink smells bad. For the sheer convenience of this tool though, I could live with both.
The initial release of the pen was supposed to be in September, but the website now says mid-November. You can sign up over at Amazon to get an email when it becomes available