Yes.... and No.
For the past few days I have been corresponding in several forums on this very question. For the uninitiated, an inker is someone who works in comic books. He or she receives finished pencil drawings of comic book pages and goes over them in black ink to make them camera ready. An inker has been called a simple tracer of lines but this is so very far from the truth. Inkers are terrific artists in their own right. As a traditional inker in the past I have had to redraw hands, correct perspectives and fill in backgrounds or create visual effects the penciler didn't have time to correct.
With the quantum leaps in computer speed and memory and graphic art programs such as Photoshop and Illustrator a lot of the inkers work is being done directly in the computer with a Wacom tablet and stylus. Time and money saved is the key here as publishers try to keep the retail price of their books down. Anyone who is a collector these days is shelling out a lot of cabbage each month to get their favorite books.
Marvel had their famous bullpen where all the individual artists came to work in the same building and worked assembly line fashion to get out the monthly publications. This is not the case today. Pencilers, inkers, letterers and colorists are scattered all over the globe. Penciled pages would have to be overnighted to the editor who okayed them or sent them back for corrections. Then the editor sent them to the inker who sent them back to the editor who... well, you see the pattern. A lot of time and money was involved in all that shipping.
Today some publishers are looking for anyone who can do pencils, inks and color all by themselves. Then team system is losing favor. Instead of large envelopes full of finished art being shipped editors are receiving CDs with an entire issue on them or in some cases the finished art is sent electronically to the publishers computers.
As a consequence there is less and less work for inkers to go around. Many I have corresponded with are learning the new way with the computer. Others, sadly to say, are in denial and scoff at the new technology as not being real -- how it can't compete with the look and feel and the style of the traditional inker. I've researched a lot of digital inkers who are so good at their craft that you couldn't tell which was traditional and which was digital if you didn't know.
The hard line traditionalists are always picking apart the digital inks and how "unreal" they are; how they can't have the style and flare of pen and brush. I disagree. In the proper hands a digital inker can do the same things as any top traditional inker and likely do it quicker. To the trained eye the flaws and inconsistencies will stand out like a sore thumb but the casual reader is not going to give a rats rear or even notice and publishers know this. And the digital inker has other advantages: when he's finished for the day all he or she has to do is save their work to a file and close the program. Traditional inkers must clean up their pens and brushes, make sure they cap their ink bottle, erase excess pencil lines and/or graphite on the page, correct ink drops or spillages with white out and put up with substandard art boards that are scratchy and catch on their nibs or cause the ink to bleed all over their finely rendered lines.
Some lament the loss of extra revenue from reselling the finished art at conventions or on the web. Another has suggested that the future of these electronic files may be as signed and numbered reprints much as old masters did with lithography so that more people could own a copy of their grand works.
The answer to my original question is that while some traditional inkers will be phased out the best will occupy some niche that the public still wants. They're not going to go away completely. The next generation of artists are going to be expected to do it all and do it quickly. There's no escaping this fact.
IMHO
Have a great day.
For the past few days I have been corresponding in several forums on this very question. For the uninitiated, an inker is someone who works in comic books. He or she receives finished pencil drawings of comic book pages and goes over them in black ink to make them camera ready. An inker has been called a simple tracer of lines but this is so very far from the truth. Inkers are terrific artists in their own right. As a traditional inker in the past I have had to redraw hands, correct perspectives and fill in backgrounds or create visual effects the penciler didn't have time to correct.
With the quantum leaps in computer speed and memory and graphic art programs such as Photoshop and Illustrator a lot of the inkers work is being done directly in the computer with a Wacom tablet and stylus. Time and money saved is the key here as publishers try to keep the retail price of their books down. Anyone who is a collector these days is shelling out a lot of cabbage each month to get their favorite books.
Marvel had their famous bullpen where all the individual artists came to work in the same building and worked assembly line fashion to get out the monthly publications. This is not the case today. Pencilers, inkers, letterers and colorists are scattered all over the globe. Penciled pages would have to be overnighted to the editor who okayed them or sent them back for corrections. Then the editor sent them to the inker who sent them back to the editor who... well, you see the pattern. A lot of time and money was involved in all that shipping.
Today some publishers are looking for anyone who can do pencils, inks and color all by themselves. Then team system is losing favor. Instead of large envelopes full of finished art being shipped editors are receiving CDs with an entire issue on them or in some cases the finished art is sent electronically to the publishers computers.
As a consequence there is less and less work for inkers to go around. Many I have corresponded with are learning the new way with the computer. Others, sadly to say, are in denial and scoff at the new technology as not being real -- how it can't compete with the look and feel and the style of the traditional inker. I've researched a lot of digital inkers who are so good at their craft that you couldn't tell which was traditional and which was digital if you didn't know.
The hard line traditionalists are always picking apart the digital inks and how "unreal" they are; how they can't have the style and flare of pen and brush. I disagree. In the proper hands a digital inker can do the same things as any top traditional inker and likely do it quicker. To the trained eye the flaws and inconsistencies will stand out like a sore thumb but the casual reader is not going to give a rats rear or even notice and publishers know this. And the digital inker has other advantages: when he's finished for the day all he or she has to do is save their work to a file and close the program. Traditional inkers must clean up their pens and brushes, make sure they cap their ink bottle, erase excess pencil lines and/or graphite on the page, correct ink drops or spillages with white out and put up with substandard art boards that are scratchy and catch on their nibs or cause the ink to bleed all over their finely rendered lines.
Some lament the loss of extra revenue from reselling the finished art at conventions or on the web. Another has suggested that the future of these electronic files may be as signed and numbered reprints much as old masters did with lithography so that more people could own a copy of their grand works.
The answer to my original question is that while some traditional inkers will be phased out the best will occupy some niche that the public still wants. They're not going to go away completely. The next generation of artists are going to be expected to do it all and do it quickly. There's no escaping this fact.
IMHO
Have a great day.
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