The world has been cooking for a while and in this page I (raevpet that's me, OG gobbo author, idk there may be a bunch of contributors at some point) will try and just list some of the original sources of inspiration that went into the project. So here are some of reference that inform where I come from in terms of my approach to aesthetics without necessarily being the style that has to inform further development. It's just good to know, you know?

Cover for the 1996 demo tape Depressive Silence II, a release that DS nerds obsess over

A sibling of black metal, a deeply atmospheric and moody genre. It evokes a longing for something lost, a haunting memory, a pale shadow of something grander. Complicated politically, it’s a genre that is tragically inextricable from a history of artists who are shitty n*zi edgelords, but like many such things, it has trappings that are universal enough to have been adopted by people who don’t suck. You just gotta do your research if you're diving in.

Crispy, crunchy, dark, mysterious, broken, flawed. The photocopied aesthetic is very much deliberate. It is a genre that shares a root with the ethos of the early punk movement and zine culture. In the year of our lord 2026, most dungeon synth that gets a physical release gets released on cassette tape. It is about creating something haunted with rudimentary means.

Look at this weirdo. What da heck!

Conan being the obvious example here, but all kinds of old school pulpy ass fantasy. The big thing I pull from here is that they often follow the good ol’ Rule of Cool. If something rocks, you don’t waste time trying to justify it. This sort of flies in the face of me wanting the universe to feel grounded and lived in, but that is a thing I apply to characters. I want the people in the world to feel real and relatable, but sometimes you just put a big floating castle into your story cause it looks dope as fuck.

Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun is the prime example here and an extremely formative book for my current tastes, but the entire genre space has a hugely influential vibe. Goblin is not a science fiction / science fantasy setting, but the tonal elements of the world being built on ruins of an unimaginably old world, a fallen empire whose grandeur is magnified by looking at it through the lens of faded legends and incomprehensible ruins. You feel the immense weight of impenetrable history as you scrape by under the yoke of mundanity.

Cover for The Laughing Magician by Jack Vance, art by Stephen Fabian, one of the best to ever do it. Vibes off the chart.

This one's more strictly for the Goblin Librarian game. Who knows what else this world extends its nasty little tendrils into. Anyway,

The world of Goblin is bleak and depressing and is set in a high fantasy / dying earth fantasy setting. It draws inspiration from both dungeon synth, black metal, and other grimdark aesthetics, but is also a funny, warm, and optimistic game. Now that in and of itself is a contrast, which makes this thematic and neat, but mostly I just don’t want to fall into the trap of making it look like a sad fantasy novel or a black metal album cover. There needs to be a certain levity to carry the heavy themes in the game and I wanna be able to keep it kinda poppy and vibrant in its feel.

Illustration by Andrew MacLean

Balancing out the contrast, there needs to be some scritchy scratchiness and texture to the art, we don’t want to lose the bleakness and the tone of the world. This pillar is deliberately vague because there are a million ways to add a feeling of texture to a 2D illustration. Loose linework and hatching (see below), wobbly lines, some kind of noise effect on your flats, all valid. This pillar is just here to keep me honest about keeping it a little loose.

Good ass illustration by Chilean artistAlfredo Cáceres

A difficult aesthetic to put into words, but is once again about contrast. It juxtaposes the humorous and the grotesque. It’s got an unnerving quality.

I think about this sad dog at least once a month. From Over The Garden Wall, if you weren't already aware.