Sean Äaberg

MINIMALISM

The scariest video games were always the ASCII or text based games because my brain would just fill in the details, even though DUNGEON DEGENERATES appears to be a maximalist exercise, this kind of minimalism is an influence.

FOCUS

I’ve been listening to Moving Waves & Hamburger Concerto by the Dutch Prog group Focus, on the map for the deliriously eccentric & energetic Hocus Pocus & having launched guitarist Jan Akkerman. These are probably some of my favorite records, I love the mix of Prog, Jazz Fusion, Hard Rock, Classical etc, these go perfectly with Camel‘s best albums.

INEVITABLE

I had a dream last night about talking to a group of younger people about the importance of Happenings & specifically the Exploding Plastic Inevitable for culture. We have definitely been in a decline in multiple ways for a while & desperately need something that shows that life can & should be lived deliberately, artfully, intentionally, because there has been so much fractured, isolated, passive living that the Megacorps just suck off of!

ELIXIR OF LIFE

Just thinking back to when we did the release party for Mean Streets at Reverend Nat’s & he made us this sweet drink! It was all swirly with edible glitter! I participated by having a stroke & not attending because I was in the hospital!

WHAT A FOOL AM I

Jaycee has consistently done an awesome job rendering my drawings into three dimensions, including having to come up with backs for the many I didn’t draw backs for! It has been a thrill for six years!

WIZARD SLEEVES

One of the fun things about running a weird little company is getting to make things that no one else would make, case in point the Wizard Sleeves, alternate 7” sleeves for records that don’t exist. The intention for these was to make bootlegs that are even less legitimate than bootlegs to be hung on the wall of a local record store & destroy the minds of collectors! Here we have my Teen Angels & Discharge Morrissey sleeves!

TURN IT AROUND

I just watched Turn It Around: The Story Of East Bay Punk. It was good, although I knew most of what was covered just through living through it, having done a lot of reading old zines & reading Gimme Something Better. The focus on Gilman & the way the scene worked when it worked well was great & made me feel proud & idealistic at the same time. I never felt fully in the Berkeley scene, because living in so deep East Oakland, it could take me three hours to get to Gilman! So, I...

BEEFARONI

Jaycee did a fantastic job sculpting the Beefy Barbarian from the Malingerers. This character looks like a certain famous barbarian, but covered in scars, grizzled & more world weary. This is not some muscle building twinkie! More when they are done.

OH LORE, KUMBAYA

Another project for my ever-growing pile is a Dungeon Degenerates Lore book that matches the Rules & Missions books! When will it come out? 

GERMAN EXPRESSIONISM

One of the funnest things about using MidJourney is I don’t feel locked into a particular style. So, I’m doing a series in the style of German Expressionist film. When I’m done with my big list of projects, I’m planning on doing a series of AI Art zines, but I’ve got a backlog of projects waiting in line.

COMIC CAN

This is probably from 2005 or so, I was working on an unpublished Daily Strip & in my newfound ability to draw lots of comics, I decided to also draw all the Sunday Strips. This is before I had the ability to get things published, I’d just draw & draw & draw & draw, I should look at my sketchbooks from back then.

SHROOMIN

The real Mushroom Kingdom! It’s the weekend, I’m doing some MidJourney because I’m spending all week working on the new Dungeon Degenerates stuff so this constitutes a break for me!

PSYRUP

I found this monster art I did way before DUNGEON DEGENERATES for the band Psyrup, I colored it today & will use it as some kind of freebie card or something in the future. This was based off the D&D Imtellect Devourer, but I think I’ll call it the Brain Hopper or something in German if it sounds better!

PORK 9

The cover for PORK 9. I think this is the first appearance of Gumball Jerry in the magazine, but I had come with him earlier than PORK probably for the Monsters, Weirdos & Creeps cards. It was lame having people point out the swastika as some kind of “gotcha” moment. As I have stated repeatedly, I like the swastika as both a symbol of spiritual good luck & benevolence & a symbol hated by the West as a symbol of a defeated enemy, racism & whatever people want to ascribe to ...

AMY

The Self Edge ad for PORK 9, featuring Amy Winehouse battling an octopus! She had just died the year previous & had cemented herself into an icon that we loved! Still a tragic demise that gets to me if I think about it too much!

PORK 8

The cover for PORK 8, the crossroads. I think I was at a literal crossroads at this point, going from the smaller world of Garage Rock to the larger world of big tent Rock&Roll. Which included Punk, Metal & that sort of thing. At this point I can’t imagine limiting myself in any way, but it was different running a magazine, it was more about the We than Me.

BIRD RIDERS

The final of the six monster minis that we’re releasing as free STL files for DD KS5 backers is done & looks fantastic! Now I need to figure out how to disseminate them online correctly!

THE DOCUMENTS

I’m working on so many projects simultaneously, but managing not to multitask, or get distracted, or ignore one thing for another, it’s great. So here are a bunch of images I conjured up with Midjourney .

THE DOCUMENTS

I’ve been using MidJourney to generate this series of cool images in the style of Medieval Manuscripts, the things it is coming up with are weird, they’re like the misunderstandings that version 4 would generate, it’s great, enjoy

19

I did this when I was 19, 999999,19. The average age of a soldier in VietNam, I’m going to have Alex Hagen redraw it so he can live on in DUNGEON DEGENERATES. Alex drew the loot cards for the Malingerers!

STYLES

I’ve been messing with Midjourney to see what I can do with it & in doing it, so much of being an artist is about communication, intent & audience response. So, it’s not the tools that you use, it’s the language you speak & the poetry of your words. There is obviously zero handcraft in this, but craft is its own thing!

GOBLINKO WRESTLING FEDERATION

I’ve been doing these Goblinko Wrestling Federation wrestlers over on the Instagram. I’ve been coming up with tons of them & trying to only post once a day, these guys will find there way into a wrestling zine. I’ve just been real busy making all the new stuff from the Dungeon Degenerates Kickstarter, I don’t have a lot of extra time right now!

EPIC FEELINGS

 I'm feeling the epicness of life this morning & this is the soundtrack.

COLIN’S QUEST

I don’t know if I spilled the beans here, but our intention is to release 3 video games in the next couple years. I hope these will bring GOBLINKO to a better understanding & saturation of the people so they know what we’re trying to do! Here is the beginning outline for Colin’s Quest.

Colin’s Quest

Colin is the next in line to be king of the Goblins, but he wants to be a Dandy & live a life of luxury. The Goblin King dies & Colin runs awa...

HELLSHIRE

A bunch of the labels I did for the Hellshire Beer series from Oakshire take place in a very similar vein as the Würstreich. Although not explicitly the Würstreich, I have themes that come out in my work consistently.

BEANS

Probably around 2014 I decided that one free magazine wasn’t enough & so we started BEANS to go with PORK. BEANS was free with orders from the GOBLINKO MEGAMALL which was developing its own identity separate from PORK. BEANS was more light-hearted & random compared to PORK, I wanted a place to be more flexible & felt like PORK was its own thing, although later @katie_aaberg convinced me that I could put whatever I wanted in PORK. Anyhow, BEANS!

ELECTRIC LETTUCE

I wrote three treatments for a free comic that was supposed to be given out at the Electric Lettuce weed dispensaries. The ideas were rejected for being “too dark”, i also sketched out the concepts, but I didn’t scan those. But here’s my write up!

ELECTRIC LETTUCE FUNNIES

BY SEAN AABERG

YOUNG RICK LETTUCE IS IN NEW JERSEY IN THE 60S. HE IS BEING SQUASHED BY SQUARE SOCIETY. HE IS TEMPTED OUT OF NEW JERSEY BY A SMELL. IT IS A SMOKE. SCENES OF URB...

MALINGERERS

In other news Jaycee is beginning the sculpts for the new Malingerer adventurers. A Makingerer is someone who pretends to be Ill when they are supposed to be working! I like this word additionally because Syl calls Tony a malingerer in a later episode of the Sopranos & it stood out so much, it busted me up. So now this joke lives forever!

LOTS IN PROGRESS

I’m working on all the new DD stuff that we unleashed with the new Kickstarter & also a bunch of hush hush projects, but I’ll talk about them here because that’s what this is for! We started talks with a video game developer about a series of DUNGEON DEGENERATES video games, hopefully the first of which will come out next year! I’m not going to list specifics but the general idea is that each game will be a different kind of game, each distinct from the other! Then, I’ve got the...

FISH THING

Jaycee showed me the third out of the six free stl file sculpts that were unlocked during the kickstarter! The weird bastard turned out awesome!