The engineers and designers at Belgian company Dozendots have a simple goal to “improve your life with new simple technologies which can be easily integrated in your lifestyle.” The group was interested in pointillism artists and their projects but noticed that their drawings took weeks or months to create because the points needed to be applied one by one. Their solution is a pen with a rotary motor inside that moves in and out to create patterns for the user. INKI is the subject of a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign to fund their first round of production pieces.
The pen can draw normal lines, and create patterned lines in dots, dashes, U shapes and V shapes. Shape and intensity of the patterns can be changed by applying more or less pressure and varying the drawing angle. The system is powered by a AAA 1.5 Volt battery that can keep the pen writing for approximately four hours. The pen has a 9 millimeter barrel and is 15 centimeters long, with the ink tip punching in and out at 700 movements per minute and a retraction length of 4 millimeters. A Japanese gel ink is used for its consistent flow properties, and refills can be purchased through the campaign or directly from the company.
INKI’s crowdfunding campaign has a few language barrier speedbumps and a robust comment section where at least one user noted that the project is very similar to the Cuttlelola Dotspen. Dozendots did address the similarities, listing the reasons that the INKI pen is better and going all the way back to the Belgian patent that creator Elton Eale holds for an ‘Ensemble d’impression pointilliste’. Curiously, several mentions are made of the project’s Instagram account and all of the artists who’ve been posting their work there, but the link and several google adjacent searches turned up dead except for sites pointing to the company's account. The crowdfunding campaign has not yet met its €24,000 goal as it enters the last three days before ending on March 16, 2019.