Sean Äaberg

THE BATTLE FOR BRÜTTELBURG

I’m starting to get the promotional materials ready for the Battle For Brüttelberg, & we’re getting the Kickstarter together for launch on April 30th! I’m working on pricing arcade cabinets & we’re looking into a whole mess of new things! Get stoked!

GBH

I remember the first time I came across a GBH record in the wild, there was this tabloid, cartoony aspect to UK82 Punk that I loved, a cultural stability that you didn’t see in American Punk of the same time. I had to make it mine!

WILD ACID VOMIT!

Ellis Burnheart spotted my art book Acid Vomit! in the wild at Odd Mart in Minneapolis! Looking back at the work I produced in this period makes me accutely aware of how starved I was for visual stimulation & cultural context! I over produced these things & now we can all look back on them in wonder!

THAT FUNNY FEELING!

Halloween means something more than the one holiday to me - to most of us that appreciate it, it’s a way of being goofily morbid & not so controlled. It’s a good thing, disguised as lightly bad. Halloween means something more than the one holiday to me - to most of us that appreciate it, it’s a way of being goofily morbid & not so controlled. It’s a good thing, disguised as lightly bad.

THE MORBAD VERMINER!

You’ll know about this project soon! But now, you’re the first to see this guy!

DEGENERATE AT HOME

We’re releasing STL files of new miniatures so we can ease the burden of international shipping & print up as many DUNGEON DEGENERATES miniatures as you want! These are the six that were unlocked as part of the fifth printing Kickstarter, & they will be followed by more!

NEW MINIS!

We’re having Jaycee resculpt all of the conventional sculpts for a secret project! Here’s the Moblin!

YOUR MOVE

’ve been thinking about assumptions about the world & how it works lately, I’ve been feeling less & less sure about the outside world & more & more sure about my inside world lately. I’m content to move my pieces slowly forward & have only a small idea of the moves of my opponent. I’m stoked to be able to move my pieces at all. The game & the board & the other players aren’t ideal, but this is the match we find ourselves in.

MORE SALT

More SALT comics - I did these for BEANS originally, a free zine that went out with orders from the GOBLINKO MEGAMALL, I’ve got enough old Salt material now that I’m going to compile a whole comic of them! I’m going to have to do that, feels good to revive an old character!

THE FUTURIST RECONSTRUCTION OF THE UNIVERSE

One of the things that really impressed on me coming up was a manifesto called “the Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe” by Balla & Depero. The idea that an artist could have enough creative energy to redesign EVERYTHING, was mind-blowing & very attractive to me! Yes, it’s full of hubris, yes, it’s mania probably fueled by stimulants, but sometimes it takes running our little engines on overdrive to escape the Earth’s mundane gravity. There’s a lot to do out there!

ORANGE & BLACK

Halloween means more than one day a year to me, it’s a childhood fixation that has stayed with me throughout my life. The idea that you could be weird, dark & anti-social on one day gave me permission to be weird, dark & anti-social every day! I try hard to bring that manic, candy-fueled energy into everything I do, like a Goblin Willy Wonka!

PIG TOWN

I lived in a neighborhood in Baltimore called Pig Town, they used to run pigs through the streets to the slaughterhouses in the old days, when I lived there in 1997 it was a cheap, run down neighborhood that looked like the neighborhood in Hair Spray but way more ghetto! This brief period of time left an impression on me, I lived away from home for the first time & grew a lot, & Baltimore grew on me too!

ADVENTURE

An aborted comic attempt with SALT looking for adventure done in 2006 or so when I first created DUNGEON DEGENERATES. It’s cool to have SALT reunited with this world!

GERRY

Here’s Gerry the Goblin Gourmande , the boss of Goblin Town. Gerry has a pension for the nuances & complexities of human food, preferring those over the typical Goblin cuisine of small, living, gross things like snails, mice, worms & whatever else they can catch & shove in their mouth. Gerry likes food so much that he can no longer walk & has to be carried by a crew of underlings!

SALT

We’re the very best at bein‘ bad! I created SALT as a younger, cuter character called TAFU for a r-Shirt series for Bill Adler Design. That project didn’t go anywhere so I toughened him up, named him SALT & used him for a bunch of projects! I’ve got a bunch of unpublished & under published pieces featuring him that I’ll post in the future, but he’s shaping up to be the ideal protagonist for the Battle for Brüttelburg!

TINY’S GARAGE

There was a period there (2011-2015) where we were presenting lots of shows in Eugene & Portland & things were really happening! It was fun! This show was fun! Tiny’s Tavern was such a great dive.

PERSPECTIVE

One of the things I’m going for with the Battle for Brüttelburg is to capture that feeling of possibility that early video game filled me with. There was also a question or a real feeling of exploration, as opposed to feeling like everything is a copy of a copy of a copy. I want to evoke & speak the language of what came before but I also want to break lots of new ground!

THE FLYING JAR

A pixelated version of the Flying Jar, I was influenced directly by Nausicaä & then informed by my obsession with ancient technology! Anyhow, this guy is a boss & I detailed a bunch of stages that totally evoke classic games like Gradius or my personal favorite Life Force! The work is coming fast & free now, piling up on itself!

MORE PORTRAITS

I‘m going full steam on the Battle For Brüttelburg & I haven’t switched into overworking mania at all - I stop work by dinner every day & I’ve been taking weekends consistently, even though I’ve got lots of irons in the fire, I just patiently progress on each of them & as they say, “work smarter.” Such a difference from what I’m used to! This video game is going to be awesome!

SCRATCH

It’s weird having worked on a project since 2007 & only increased its importance over time, I guess that’s the nature of a successful project! Even though Hand of Doom came out in 2017, The Battle for Brüttelburg should be coming out relatively soon, I’m still finding so much to explore & the number of people I want to share it with just expands, I’ve barely scraped the surface yet!

ANIMATED

8 BIT FACES

I‘ve been doing lot of character design in 8 bit - it’s definitely different than regular drawing, but it’s fun & has been going well! Here are three of them I’ve done so far. They’ll have some limited animation for the Battle for Brüttelburg!

HIGH ALCHEMIST

I just finished this High Alchemist Hut scene for the Battle for Brüttelburg! I’ve gotten to the point where things are moving really fast & freely & compounding on each other! I’m also really enjoying pixel art & am thinking about ways to apply it in meat space!

THE HELLSHIRE ZINE

I just finished this one & am glad to release it into the wild! I’ve been doing the Hellshire beer labels for Oakshire brewing since 2011, this year is the 13th release & I did this zine all about the series with notes from the brewers Dan Russo & Matt Van Wyck & a longer conversation between me & founder Jeff Althouse the thing came out beautifully! It was also cool to do a zine for a brewery & see how legit, beautiful & quickly it came together! 40 pages, full ...

ART & LIFE

When I was 8 I decided I was going to be an artist, I didn't know how or why but I knew. When I was 10 I discovered Games Workshop - & I realized I wanted to create worlds that people could fall into - that I could fall into - when I was 12 I discovered Punk & Zines at the same time & found that you could enter another world that was real - In these three things I discovered my formula. DUNGEON DEGENERATES is a mix of all three!

GOBLIN’S ARMPIT! 3.1

NEWS

I’m starting some new stuff on this Patreon for 2024, starting in February! Lots of new stuff! More with the video game once I figure that out more!

ARROW OF IMPOSSIBILITY

Arrow to the Sun was originally a short cartoon made in 1973 by Gerald McDermott, he followed with a book of the story, which combined a sort of brutalist, cubist, primitivism combined with a lysergic color palette. Realm of Impossibility was a video game released in 1983. The game featured a tiny scale of guys running through a maze, that had the brutalist, cubist, primitivist quality of early pixel art - the bright colors coming out of a heavy blackness - screaming neon in a dark night. Pur...

THE MOON

I’m enjoying the cold today - feeling refreshed, had a good talk with Katie at lunch yesterday, gonna start my first kustom jacket since the stroke, lots of ideas!

GOBLIN’S ARMPIT

I’m thinking about doing a 3.0 installment of my old zine Goblin’s Armpit, I haven’t done that kind of exploratory, personal writing since we left Oakland, & it used to be my primary way of processing life. I also haven’t released an issue since 1998! Seems like a good way to get my noodle processed! My art used to be entirely wrapped up in zines & now, things have changed! I think it’s a good idea. Anyhow, we’ll see if that materializes.