Travis Walton - inking

One thing that Travis Walton talked about was the inking stage of a comic.  He explained that inking isn't just tracing.  If you just trace the pencil drawing when you ink, then you're doing a bad job of inking.  

He explained that when you ink you have to be able to separate the foreground, middle ground, and background.  To do that you use line width, detail, and treatment.  

When you ink you have to make decisions about how you are going to texture things and you shouldn't texture and treat everything the same.

When you ink you need to give things weight.  You can do that by making the lines on the bottom of the form thicker. 

Basically when you are inking you still need to be making good design decisions that help tell the story and make things very clear to the reader.  You can still ink with your own style as long as that style isn't a hindrance to the clarity of the story.  You shouldn't use style as an excuse.