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The Scribble Pen: Scans Colors, then Reproduces Them

By Rain Noe - June 19, 2014

in Tech | Object Culture

Back in 2010 we showed you designer Jinsun Park's nifty Color Picker concept. The idea was that a magic marker would be loaded up with both a sensor and RGB ink cartridges, allowing you to instantly scan a color—and draw with it on paper. Here's one of her original renderings:

Jinsun Park

Jinsun Park

Now a new company called Scribble may be bringing us what Park originally envisioned (though it's unclear if she's involved). Their soon-to-be-posted-on-Kickstarter Scribble Pen operates exactly like Park's concept proposal, though they've opted for CMYK rather than RGB. "This innovative pen can hold over 100,000 unique colors in its internal memory," the company writes, "and can reproduce over 16 million unique colors."

If Park is not involved, Scribble's choice of promotional imagery seems pretty coincidental. Below is Park's rendering from 2010, side by side with Scribble's rendering from their press release:

Or maybe I'm just comparing apples to oranges.

In any case, the company plans to release two models: The Scribble Ink, described above, which can be used to draw on paper. They'll also have the Scribble Stylus, which has the scanner but no ink cartridges; the idea with the Stylus is that you scan colors to beam over to your smartphone or tablet via their mobile app. "Your colors become more useful when they are organized, tagged, searchable and converted to various color models," their thinking goes.

The Kickstarter is slated for July, with the Ink going for $149.95 and the Stylus for $79.95. But they're offering a 20% off deal for those willing to sign up for pre-orders here.

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powers

10 years ago

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@Adam - or Wacom... and even they didn't have a lot of success (from what I know) with their analog/digital pen-tracking sketching hardware/software system they attempted a couple years ago. The trickiest part is not going to be the scanning, but the color mixing part. My daughter has a remote-controlled car that has a color scanner on it which then changes the color of the onboard LEDs to match whatever color you scanned. It's actually pretty neat-O. Getting the ink cartridges to dispense, mix & release the ink is going to be a nightmareish engineering hurdle. And even then who & what is the market? The use case? I have an iPad and Wacom Intuos stylus... What do I need this gizmo for?
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Adam

10 years ago

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the fact that they basically stole the idea.... not looking good... LOL yeah, the $79 stylus is barely feasible but $149 for the whole scan the colour then draw in that color pen, need millions to do that, need to be someone like APPL
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Zack

10 years ago

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I have seen plenty of student concepts that claimed to do the same thing. I have never seen any that actually work. I will believe this when I see a working prototype.
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k

10 years ago

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Ha! I had to read up on the Zion eyes (zeyez), that was worth a read. Considering any one of us designers could make all of the scribble pen images in a few days time coupled with the fact that they basically stole the idea.... not looking good.
Zion eyes 2.0 indeed
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FMD

10 years ago

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snake oil, all the photos of their "product" are photoshop or renderings, you'd think the first photos they would release would be a legitimate creation if they were to want any credibility... zion eyes 2.0 anyone?
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