I initially called this “comic styling” or “sketched” but in doing a little more research, lining an all white mini in heavy black ink is more akin to what a comic book inker would do. This process in comic books is the final stage before the colorist and letterer finish the comic book proper. The inker would clean up the original artist’s pencil lines and decide on balance with the final black lining. There is a lot more art to it than simple tracing (as Chasing Amy would argue).
I’m no artist so I’m basically tracing but I’ll try to achieve a higher calling and call it “inking.” After having my first attempt sitting on my desk, I couldn’t stop checking it out so I’ve decided to go full bore and Ink all of Mantic’s Here’s Negan Walking Dead board game.
Having Here’s Negan means I have a lot of extra figures from my already large Walking Dead collection. Since the walkers are all duplicates, I decided to run them through my inking process and get them ready for the game.
A lot of this technique is just slowly tracing inking! the contours of the models’ sculpt. A bright overhead light also helps show where you might want to embellish some deeper shadows. You can tell the lines aren’t perfect and can likely spot mistakes where the pen slipped and went off the sculpt but with so many lines laying down on the figures, it doesn’t really ruin the effect. These aren’t winning painting awards (the only paint applied is the primer). Honestly, I doubt these figures would even be legal in “painted” tournaments as you typically need three colors on a model to qualify.
What’s nice about this technique is finishing them (if you can call them finished at all) only takes 10 to 15 minutes. I actually don’t consider them finished because I want to draw their bases as well to complete the look. I’ll also paint the base rim black to complete the aesthetic.
So there we have it. 12 walkers down in an Inked style. I want to completely remake Here’s Negan in this format so I have a lot to do. Next up though, is the Heroes. I know they are unique and now won’t match the style of my Walking Dead All Out War minis but if I’m really desperate, I can buy them separately in a new release Mantic is running for their Call To Arms system.