I believe this has been asked before by someone somewhere on this forum, but I still thought I'd ask...

What do you use for Inking to get the best results? What is the best technique for inking?

When I applied for Inker, my entry was done...Well, basically with a mouse, and clicking wherever you need, while holding Shift. It makes steady lines xD

Well, it's just my style of doing it, and I was asking if there's a better or more applying way to do the inking, so I could improve.

I'd be glad to hear your response, as it's quite important to me.

I ask someone else to do it for me XD

Yeah, I'm being silly. Generally if I ink my own I use inkscape and the calligraphy tool with smoothing set to counteract my hand tremor.

a mix of brush tool and pen tool in photoshop... yeah that's about it xD just a lot of practise getting a sturdy hand, and a good tablet helps too. I am very (EXTREMELY) fortunate to have gotten my hands on a Wacom Cintiq 12wx and blimey does it work nice. My lines are so much smoother than they were before... but the previously mentioned practise helps a load too My settings are slightly adjusted on the brush tool too, to give a crisper line and improve the appearance of tapered lines.

It's also been extremely useful for me to get good at inking traditionally as well. Not having a Ctrl + Z forces you to be careful and slow, and it helps improve the sturdiness of your hand. I enjoy both digital and traditional inking, so do a lot of both xD Brush pens are great for practise since you have to be reaaaalllyy sturdy with them in order to get a good result.

Styg you have a Cintiq?!? I would do anything just to even try one, they look fantastic!

Anyway to answer your question Soutenu, practice is the only thing that helps me improve. For my personal art pieces I use a Wacom tablet and just the regular brush tool in Photoshop for digital inking and to get smooth lines I always do single, quick strokes. I still haven't gotten very accurate though and it involves a lot of ctrl-z'ing! I go a lot slower when I do things traditionally though because there's not much of a safety net there.

These sound really helpful xD Well, I don't have a tablet, so I just use Photoshop with my hand, with my mouse xD I previously stated how I do it xDD If there's anything else I should know or try, just tell me xDD

EDIT: Just tried inking with Pen tool. Gives awesome results, I must say xDD I can't resist coloring them LOL xDD

Haha your name change confused me at first! I wondered who was replying ;) But yes the pen tool is a great help I try to avoid using it an awful lot, since it can end up looking a bit too stiff, but for particularly long or awkward curves or lines it's really useful ^^ Takes a little while to get used to it, too.

Scrii - I do believe I am now forever in debt to my parents. It's great, I just have a couple of issues with it and it does take a while to get used to and get the settings right for what you want. Need to think what to do with my old one, I'm tempted to sell it for super cheap, but don't know if it's worth keeping just in case it's needed one day. I have quite a connection to it ;(

LOL Stygian I should have re-introduced myself. It's my original username that I use everywhere, so I asked Uzuri to change it to this one so you folks would know me by my original username...That's all xDD

Well yeah, it isn't easy to get the lines in the way you want. But, for me, I got used to it fastly (of course, in the "beginner" way of using it LOL ) . Now I use it not just for inking, but for drawing too LOL xD It just...Makes good looking lines xD

And...I hope I didn't do many mistakes cause English isn't my primary language xD I'm just afraid of a big mean mod called Uzuri xD

haha you got used to it faster than me then - I think I spent about a week wondering what on earth I had to press to get it to work xD What's really good about it too is that if you need to enlarge or shrink an image for whatever reason, the path stays intact so you can just re-ink them and get good lines again. It's gotten us out of a few dodgy spots before, and saved a lot of time too.

Your English is very good, by the way, I don't think you need to worry about anything :D It will be good to have a new inker on the team, too, I think something ate a few of the previous ones o.O

Well, it was easy for me to figure - I've done many vector renders of Balto characters before, so Pen tool isn't something new to me xDD Now all I think is: " Why I didn't thought of this when I was drawing/inking before?" . LOL...xDD
What do you mean by "ate"? Did they just...Dissapeared with no notice or what?

Meh, thanks xD And I am excited to be a part of the team too.

I am not inking for Wolf, but I use tablet pen pressure freehand.
I guess sometimes you can get better lines with some kinda curve tool, but I find freehand a thousand times more fun, and I think it gives more ''soul'' to the drawing.. I also used to ink freehand when I still used a mouse.

I remember helping to ink the ravens in that one shot for the scene 2 trailer. I did those freehand since they were small.

er, freehand in GIMP that is XD

I have a tablet and I just drew it on another layer in GIMP :D