Ink!Sans is an out!code character who does not belong to any specific alternative universe (AU) of Undertale. He exists out of them but can interact with them. Ink!Sans supports the artists to keep contributing to the fandom and generally embodies an artistic aesthetic that even follows him in his combat abilities.
What is an AU? An AU (or alternative universe) is a spin-off of an official storyline/concept that explores the different possibilities of said concept by putting characters in a different setting, with different abilities, or in different social situations, etc. In this case, Undertale’s storylines and characters have AUs based on them. The entirety of the AUs is called the Multiverse.
The fandom’s production (mostly of those said AUs) are Ink’s essence of living; as long as it’s creative and productive, he’s healthy and energic.
Ink!Sans can appear everywhere in any AU of his liking from any kind of liquid. He uses them as portals.
His big brush gives him the ability to create anything he likes and make it come to life, with the exception of dead characters.
Regarding fights, Ink!Sans finds purpose in trying to limitate the damage done by other out!code characters who wish to disrupt the original scripts of AUs. That includes people who wish to undo the consequences of genocide timelines. Ink!Sans prioritizes the respect of timelines’ scenarios over emotional conflicts.
Ink!Sans does not create AUs nor characters. He simply likes to think that he guards them from what he considers to be anomalies to the original scripts and intentions of the creators.
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Check out this post for notes about his outfit and additionnal doodles.
The following bits of information are based on Ink’s lore and backstory. You can read more in the backstory section.
Brown overwhelms the palette because it is often the color gotten when all paints are mixed together.
Yellow and green being the first colors Ink experienced, they both have a tribute in the outfit.
Ink tuck in his overalls and wears them as pants.
Lack of shoes translate his carefreeness and mobility.
The light green color on his gloves simulates the tablet glove digital artists use.
The white undershirt speaks of how Ink attemps to cover his lack of soul, but his emptiness sometimes shines through.
The japanese-esque aesthetic comes from the fact that the idea of Ink came to me by coming across the picture of a brush made specifically for sumi and chinese inks in 2016. His outfit is also partially inspired from what samurais are sometimes depicted to wear in their ukiyo-e representations from the Edo period of Japan.
Ink!Sans often tries mixes of paints and scribbles notes on his scarf because of his bad memory.
His pupils change shape and color every time he blinks. It is speculated that they represent an AU with each shape and color combination, and each time they appear, it means Ink is watching the AU’s events unfurl through his eyes as if he was constantly observing. Ink claims that the shapes and colors are just random. They are never seen white.
The rainbow vials on his stash belt are paint bottles with heart shaped tops that cover the range of the rainbow.
His brush is most of the time carried on his back.
Under all the clothes, his bones are colored and marked by strange shapes.
♦ What are his heart shaped vials for?
His vials keep paints of color that are adapted just for him, and each vial gives him a range of emotion. He fills them at his Doodlesphere regularly. Ink needs these since he doesn’t have a soul and can’t feel on his own. Drinking a bit of all of them regularly allows him to maintain a normal constitution.
If anyone else tried drinking them, it would just taste like paint.
♦ Which emotions do they all represent then?
Red is wrath/aggressivity, and yellow/orange is euphoria. Between these two colors, there is a hue of emotions for all the other colors, and it is up to you to think of their meanings :-)
♦ Why do his eyes change shapes and colors?
Ink has the tendency to drink a bit of all the colors at once to be able to balance the feelings and act as closely to a normal person who can control his emotions and react accordingly to most situations. Since all the colors are into his body at the same time, his eyes feature all of them.
♦ Do shapes have particular meanings too?
Not really, that’s pretty random. Two canon shapes do have meanings: his eyes shape like yellow stars when he’s excited or amazed, and one turns into a red target when he is fighting an enemy.
♦ Does him not having shoes hurt his feet?
Ink hardly feels physical pain like most skeleton characters. That’s what having bones for a body does! And being soulless plays a role in that too.
♦ Does Ink blush in rainbow?
Yes he does! He also happens to grow momentaneous rainbow freckles when he is deeply touched, or deeply perturbed.
♦ Does Ink have a rainbow tongue?
♦ Is there an official human design for Ink!Sans?
There currently isn’t an official human version of this design!
Ink used to have an older outfit:
This design was heavily inspired from CookieHana ( https://www.deviantart.com/cookiehana )’s Pokemon trainer character Pen. The issue is the reason why the oufit was changed. Read this post for the whole explanation!
♦ Will I still be able to use Ink’s main old design?
I would ask you to please prioritize Ink’s new design, given the circumstances. I know I cannot stop everyone from using this old design, and I will not come for you if you use it. I would simply want my wish to be respected given I allow people to use him for so many projects, professional ones included.
♦ Will I have to scrap the artworks I made of Ink in his old design but did not post yet? Will I have to change to Ink’s new design in my comics/animations immediately?
You don’t need to scrap your artwork of Ink’s older design! Please feel free to finish it and post it online, I will absolutely not hold it against you. If you claim that your drawings were made before the announcement, I will believe you. You are also free to conclude your comics and animations with Ink’s old design if it was already started before the announcement and you can’t make the new design fit at all. I will only ask that if you can make the change of Ink’s design fit with your storylines and start using it from there, please do so as soon as you can. I would really appreciate it. <3
♦ Will the alternative versions of Ink (like Fresh!Ink) have to change designs too?
No, characters like Fresh!Ink or specific designs you made of Ink to fit in your AUs do not have to change!
♦ Will you revamp Fresh!Ink’s design?
At the moment, I don’t plan to! I would rather let the monstrosity be what it is! :-)
♦ Can we still draw the alternate outfits you made of Ink?
If you are talking about these two following designs, yes, you can absolutely continue using them! <3
♦ Will these two alternate outfits get revamped?
I’m not planning to currently, but maybe one day! Both previous and new versions would be totally free to use for Ink if that does happen! :-)
♦ Will all of the Ink fusions/fanchildren have to change designs too?
No, they do not require a change either at all!
♦ Which outfit do you like more?
I’m happy with what I did for the 2020 design, but Ink is still Ink and I honestly love him regardless of what he wears! <3 On that note, people are totally free to create outfits for him as they have in the past!
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♦ What’s his character like? (personality, quirks…)
Ink!Sans has a tendency to get too excited about things. He also has very short memory and will forget about different things - sometimes stopping mid sentence to try and remember what he just said a few seconds before.
He is very passionate about art and likes to motivate characters and creators. He’s able to change clothes on people just by a paint of his brush, and he loves to create the kind of outfit they like. Even though he uses art as a tool, no one really saw his drawings or paintings.
He’s a mischief-maker. Pranks are his guilty pleasure.
Ink in general acts wittily and provocatively.
With him hardly having a proper social understanding, he’s blunt in his teasing and mocking just like in his ability to give support and to be kind.
He’s really forgetful (which is why he takes notes on his scarf).
Ink approaches ennemies carefully. He will never try to attack them first, but will mostly focus on trying to discover their motives and talk them through it. Although he does come off as a jerk in first impression, he does know what to analyze to understand the issue so he can brush people the right way and hopefully have them listen.
He loses his pencils all the time.
He happens to sometime randomly vomit ink, mostly when he gets too emotionally shaken, whether from passion or shock.
Ink supports all kinds of art, like painting, literature, dance, music, etc.
He is afraid of whiteness, of absence of presences or shapes around him, loneliness, huge empty spaces…
Ink does not appear as a perfectly well behaved character. He can sometimes be inconsiderate in his mocking and cruel in his opinions, and deep down he sees other characters as story characters and not as people like him like a proper story would. He has a very special morality that sometimes shows to be really seperated from his emotions. He can be identified as chaotic neutral.
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Before asking any question related to this subject, please first check out the His Story comic which retraces Ink’s backstory.
♦ What is Ink’s original name?
The same name as his original AU.
♦ What is Ink’s original AU? Who made it?
_____tale. The owner does not have a proper identity, it could be anybody.
♦ Did Ink tear off his soul?
Yes, he did. And thus he erased himself from his AU, which had only one unfinished timeline with no possibility to reset.
He ended up in what will become his Doodle sphere.
♦ What happened to his old AU?
It supposedly stayed exactly the same, unfinished and forgotten.
♦ Who is the artist that splashed him with colors?
It could be anyone in the fandom. You, your friend, or any artist ever!
♦ Where do those tattoos come from?
His tattoos are extremely tiny, nearly unreadable bits of binary. They are parts of the multiverse’s core code that stuck onto him and formed marks on him when he traveled from his AU to what will become his Doodle sphere. :-)
♦ If Ink runs out of those paints and is unable to refill them until the colors in him eventually fade, what would happen?
Ink would become a husk, like an empty shell. He will simply stop moving, responding, and will not have any of his senses working. Ink’s body can be completely controlled by someone else, but his ink abilities will not be available anymore. He basically becomes a corpse until he is refilled with paints. Surprisingly enough, it’s very easy to defeat him!
♦ Why doesn’t Ink just make himself/steal a soul?
His duty to protect the timelines forbids him to steal a soul for himself. He also cannot make himself a soul because he cannot revive what is dead. Although he knows his emotion vials have a weakness, he believes it is a better advantage than a soul that can be visible and destroyed. Let’s say it’s less expected. :-)
- THE STATE OF HIS STORY COMIC -
♦ Are you going to continue/complete His Story comic?
Up to this day, I’m not sure myself. I love Ink with all my heart, but he is a vivid interest that goes back to 2016, and because of my growth and the changes in my life, my interests have shifted to something else. A comic is a lot of work, I am learning that much myself since I’m focusing on my professional project. The prospect of working on His Story is no longer appealing to me, unfortunately. :(
So far, everything that has happened in the released parts of His Story has been the most important. Ink is an abandoned project who managed to pull himself out of his situation to turn into this grand, known figure of protection and creation, and all this journey comes with its consequences and traumas. He is an insecure, self-centered character with abandonment issues and who has a hard time trusting his emotions. He is a very paradoxical spin off of the whole Multiverse fandom of Undertale, and thinking of it, I wonder if it truly needs more to it.
I might shorten the story and make a conclusion, so I don’t leave a bittersweet unfinished project behind me! <3 I will gladly keep talking, drawing and reblogging art or content of him. He’s been a big part of my life and he’s still the little miracle I cherish.
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- ADDITIONAL LORE AND FACTS -
He was created in January 2016!
♦ How did you come up with the idea of Ink?
I was trying to find a new AU concept because I was very unsatisfied with my contributions to the fandom, and I really wanted to try my hand at an out!code character. I came across a picture of a brush made specifically for chinese and japanese ink, and it sort of clicked. I thought it would be fitting to have something that fit the incredible dynamic and power the newly AU Multiverse craze was starting to be, and that a version of Sans supporting the various creations that were appearing would be cute! :-)
♦ Why did you base yourself on Sans and not another character?
Sans was my favorite at the time, and the awareness he had on how he was part of a game that was bound to forever restart and trap him into silence was a groundbreaking character trait we had barely seen before, and it was what made him explode around the fandom. I merely followed the craze!
♦ What is the Doodle sphere?
It’s basically Ink’s personal multiverse. If you know how html and CSS work, the multiverse’s core code is the html and his Doodle sphere is the CSS that goes with it (the core code is the mechanic and the Doodle sphere is the design that makes it pretty and possible to visit.)
I imagine the multiverse’s core code as a portal that is very frightening and unsettling to travel through, and thus Ink would rather sugarcoat his little multiverse than go through the core code again.
The Doodle sphere is a colorful world where big-sized buckets float. Each bucket is an AU. The liquid in these buckets is a portal inside the AU.
Ink doesn’t exactly live to a designated area, he travels all the time. The Doodle sphere just happens to be his “base” to come back to.
♦ What are Ink’s weapons?
As written above, Ink is not one to attack first for two reasons: he would rather solve conflict rather than attack someone, and fighting uses a lot of ink out of him. The vials he drinks are not only used for emotions, they are also what enables him to manipulate ink and summon his various capacities. Although not necessary for him to manipulate ink, his big brush is a vessel to concentrate his powers and have more precision and range. This brush feels light to him, but is relatively heavy for anybody else.
Out of this ink stored inside him, he can create different moves, implying Sans-like attacks, like black colored bones and blasters. Those blasters shoot ink that can boil or solidify.
♦ What are Ink’s hobbies other than his role as a guardian?
He plays the flute! He also enjoys learning how to sew so he doesn’t always rely on his powers.
♦ What is Ink’s assigned font?
His assigned font is Note this! (https://www.dafont.com/note-this.font) but there’s absolutely no obligation to use it! <3
♦ When is Ink’s birthday?
It’s on April 15, World’s Art day! :-)
♦ What is Ink’s canon gender?
♦ What is Ink’s canon height and weight?
Ink is slightly shorter than original Sans (Comic Sans = 4 feet, so Ink Sans = 3.8 feet).
He doesn’t weight much since he’s all bones and fabric, but he does look “big-boned” (meaning his bones are wide, literally lmao.)
♦ Is Ink ambidextrous (meaning he uses both hands to draw and write)?
♦ What is Ink’s canon age?
Ink doesn’t really age, but he categorizes himself as an adult who almost has his life figured out (which is a lie).
♦ Is it okay if I draw him / RP him with another gender, age or height?
Of course, as long as you don’t force your opinion on others. If people blame you for not respecting his original gender, kindly link them to this FAQ to show them that I see no problem with my character being portrayed this way. <3
♦ What is Ink’s canon sexuality?
Ink is aromantic and asexual, meaning he is not interested in being in a romantic or sexual relationship with anyone.
♦ Is it okay if I draw him / RP him with another sexuality?
Of course, as long as you don’t force your opinion on others. If people blame you for not respecting his original sexuality, kindly link them to this FAQ to show them that I see no problem with my character being portrayed this way. <3
♦ Who is Ink canonly shipped with?
Ink isn’t and won’t be canonly paired with a partner.
♦ Is it okay if I draw him / RP him with a partner?
Of course, as long as you don’t force your opinion on others. If people blame you for not respecting his original situation, kindly link them to this FAQ to show them that I see no problem with my character being portrayed this way. <3
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♦ What are the AUs he visited?
Possibly as much as he can!
♦ Are there any other Ink!Characters?
There are currently no other official characters related to Ink!Sans or what we could call the Inktale AU.
♦ Are you the one who designed Fresh!Ink?
I am! This is the post I made about his design!
♦ What are Ink’s relationships with Undertop!Gaster and Zephyrtale!Gaster?
Undertop Gaster ( @under-top ) is one of Ink’s father figures. They slowly bonded over the wisdom and experiences the reality of knowing of the out!code world gives. Although Gaster has two sons (Undertop Sans and Papyrus), he does consider Ink as part of his family. Gaster is a charismatic ringleader who plays pretend as an in!code, but he has a lot of insomnias, hallucinations and nightmares from his past as an out!code as well as the genocide timelines of Undertop following him. He often talks about it with Ink. Ink is very curious about Gaster’s unending desire to refuse to embrace his out!code state and purposefully blend in his AU, but he relates about the idea of wanting to have a concrete place in the world. They allow themselves to have cynical talks about the Multiverse quite often, but they also manage to nurture a tender familial friendship through it.
Zephyrtale Gaster (or Aster) is part of one of my first Undertale AUs, Zephyrtale! Aster has been an in!code all his life until he met Undertop Gaster, and a little while later, Ink!Sans. He has ever since slowly been confronted to the knowledge of learning about the Multiverse and all that it implies, and develops a passion for studying it with Ink’s help. They progressively develop a friendship, and thanks to Aster, Ink grows fond of learning how to do things without relying on his creative powers, like building machinery, creating blueprints and studying astrophysics. Although they did not bond the same way, Aster, just like Gaster, sees Ink like family too.
♦ What are his relationships with Underswap!Sans, Error!Sans, Dream!Sans…
It’s up to you to decide which types of relationship you think fit the most! :-) As long as you don’t force your opinion on others or claim any of them to be canon.
Know that Ink is not canonly paired with anyone and that any couple including him is fan-made.
♦ What do you think about Error!Sans x Ink!Sans?
It’s cute! People are creative with their dynamic. I’m glad you guys are having fun, that’s the whole point! <3 Any shipping is welcome!
♦ What are your thoughts on people using Ink for RPs / shippings / their own AUs / NSFW pieces / etc ?
I don’t mind, I’m glad people are having fun with him. It’s his purpose after all! :-) As long as no one feels harmed in the process then it’s fine with me. The only thing that wouldn’t be fine is using him without credit!
♦ I’ve been hearing about Ink and a Loveball event, what is that about?
Somewhere in 2016 if I recall correctly, I participated to an Undertale community roleplay event called the Loveball where I was invited to roleplay as Ink!Sans. It was basically a lot of multiverse characters grouped in a big mansion for one evening, dressed up for a fancy party. This event was very popular and marked a big step for the development of the Multiverse part of the fandom.
♦ Are there comics about Ink?
Ink in Underswap (cancelled, it will not update anymore)
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#inktobertale is a spin-off from the very famous Inktober challenge. During the month of October, a list of prompts for drawings about Ink!Sans will be released: each day will have an assigned prompt people can interprete and draw out! The challenge will continue every day until the 31st of the month. The point is to come up with creative ways to respond to the prompts using Ink!Sans and to manage to draw something everyday until the end of the month!
♦ Is it only about Ink!Sans?
This theme was created and voted as an Ink!Sans challenge, since there are a lot of other Undertale Inktober challenges. Inktobertale will focus on the character of Ink!Sans. However, you can include other characters to interact with him!
♦ Does it only have to be traditional and inked?
No, you can work with any medium you want, even digitally! :-)
♦ Am I obligated to do all the days / do the days in the right order?
You are free to skip, swap or alternate days as you like. Feel free to even swap between different Inktober challenges! The point is to have fun and experiment this month, so make this challenge a fun experience! <3
♦ How many Inktobertale challenges have been organized so far?
Inktobertale has been organized every year since 2017. The next Inktobertale challenge will be organized in the upcoming October of 2020!
♦ What are the tags for Inktobertale?
#inktobertale(insertyear)
#inktobertaleasks (this is the tag I use when answering questions about inktobertale)
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♦ Does Ink play a part as an original character in your Dreamers project?
He does! We have settled for his role in the story, but I don’t want to say too much about it so far. Know that he is very secondary and is in no way a main character. He’s more a cute cameo.
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♦ What are the tags for Ink!Sans?
I will always use either all or some of those tags on my posts:
inkechos (this tag is for any post related to Ink that isn’t official or fan work)
/!\ #inkechos contains mostly secondary headcanons about Ink. If you have time to spare and want to know more about him and his interactions with other characters, I’d recommend you check out this tag on my blog!
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Please be sure to have read the “Official design” section before reading this.
♦ Do I have to tag you for credit every time I make Ink content somewhere!
Yes! You can mention @myebi , but if you don’t mind putting both @myebi and @comyet I would really appreciate it and certainly be grateful. <3
♦ Can I draw/write fan art of him?
Of course! Feel free to do so! <3
♦ Can I add him in my comic / Make him interact with my characters?
♦ Can I pair my OCs with him (romantically or not)?
♦ Can I design Inktale characters on my own, canon or OC?
Feel free! It’s okay to make a RP blog for him as well!
♦ If I make merch (plush, bookmark, keychain, poster…) of him, am I allowed to sell?
For now, I am okay with people selling art of him for conventions or for online stores as long as:
the merch does not go beyond A3 format
the merch is not produced massively by your company
the merch is sold for personal use of the clients only
the merch only includes artworks you made or have authorization to sell
I might stop allowing the sale of products including him in the future!
I am always available for discussion through asks or on my deviantART account! (preferably on my profile page and not through notes, thank you very much.)
♦ Can I commission other people to draw him / Can I accept commission orders including him?
Last update: January 8, 2020
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