10.8.26
AN INTERVIEW WITH TINE FIELDLING

i recently had a very nice talk with tine fieldling, a friendly hobgoblin who sculpts lil guys and makes fun and beautiful videos, and did you know she is running a kickstarter RIGHT NOW for her hazelands rpg book? hie thee hence!!

CLICK CLICK

and now for the interview:

k: our first interview question is, can you please tell us about your dog.

t: his name is bilbo, it's his sleep time, and he wants to lie in his bed. he's very cheeky, and very cute, and he's 9 months old, and a menace.

k: i cannot imagine having a 9 month old dog right now, it's like having a child.

t: kind of is! he's gotten a lot better.

BILBO 1	BILBO 2

k: well i've asked one question, so now i have to ask another one: this is for festival rumpus, which is our magazine about things people make in and around rumpus, so can you tell those people who you are?

t: yes. i'm tine, i'm from belgium, i make miniatures and art related to tabletop gaming. i've been creating the miniatures for rumpus, which has been very fun. what else do i have to say? yes, i've been in the hobby for over ten years now. i'm 28 years old now: i celebrated my 28mm scale birthday recently.

k: did you make sure your cake was in the right scale, so you could walk miniatures over it.

t: i didn't make a cake. (laughing) i am intolerant to a lot of sweets!

k: (embarrassedly) oh yeah totally! how did you celebrate your 28mm birthday?

t: we had a big picnic and we made tiny gnome hats, so we felt like we were tiny guys. and we did some kitbashing, which was very fun.

k: my next question is, how is it you found yourself sculpting tiny guys, so great segue, thank you.

t: perfect. i studied animation and i had been in the tabletop hobby for a very long time. i hadn't really done much with miniatures because i usually couldn't find a miniature that i really really liked, or liked enough to spend all the money to buy all the paints and stuff. i had sculpted for frostgrave? i think, was my first time sculpting? and i sculpted with fimo clay, some very rudimentary mushroom guys. i was like yeah, there's all these miniatures but i kind of want mushroom guys, and i can't find any mushroom guys so i'm just going to make them myself. in general i prefer making something than buying something. every time i have the option to make something i choose that option. with my animation education, i got really into stop motion, so i started sculpting a lot more, found it extremely fun, and then i kind of had the option to go for 3d education, or stop motion education, and i remember walking through the park and i was like, oh maybe i should choose 3d because i'd love to learn how to sculpt miniatures, but then i was like, no, i don't like sitting at a computer for that long, i want to make puppets. so then i did that and basically around the time i was about to finish school i met trent from miscast, and he was like, you should just try it, here's an ipad, try some sculpting, if you use an ipad it's basically like physical sculpting. i made 40 heads in a week, and i haven't stopped since. I loved especially the first moment, immediately after i sculpted something: we have a 3d printer in the house ready to go, and i did immediately print it. i've never had any children, but that felt like oh my god, i have my child in my hands. i've made this from nothing!

k: were you doing traditional sculpting before trent handed you an ipad?

t: yes i mainly did. i think that was the first time i did any digital sculpting. i had done some 3d modeling at school, but when you start 3d modeling you make robots and stuff. i didn't really vibe with that. so i have done, at different times in my life, as a kid, or at school, i had done sculpting, with different mediums, although i didn't start miniature sculpting with green stuff, i had the chance to do some handsculpting with curtis of ramshackle games, and it is a lot harder than 3d sculpting but it's also very fun. i didn't do that until after i'd gotten into 3d sculpting, except, i don't know, the odd fimo clay thing that i wanted to put on my tabletop. my favorite thing about tabletop gaming or making stuff for tabletop gaming is yes i'm creating a little sculpt, and then i'm painting it, but then i'm playing a game with my friends. having that last step is insanely fun, or even just creating 3d printable miniatures, and having other people finish it by painting it, i find incredibly fun. i struggled a lot in school because i felt like i wasn't making it for anyone, i was making it to learn, for myself, but i have very bad concentration, so for me that was very tough to keep up because i didn't care about grades, i never cared about money, so money or grades are a terrible motivator for me. my main motivator is to make something for my friends, or that i can actually do something with, or that inspires people, and unless i'm making that, i probably won't finish it.

k: can you please describe your relationship to fairyland?

t: oh my god. absolutely. as a kid, i’ve always been obsessed with fairies and gnomes. every forest i went into i was looking for gnomes, and like any strange kid i was bullied quite a lot in school and i remember making these magazines and they were fairyland magazines and i don’t know, i wrote a bunch of articles from fairyland, i made illustrations and all types of things for this magazine, and then i printed it out and wanted people to read it, and everyone was like oh this is so weird, but it never stopped me. i was like, oh i guess i have to make something better now! i also remember i made one drawing of fairyland, and then i was like, oh this isn't big enough, and then i kept sticking papers to it. i think i was probably like 8 or 9 at that point. my parents kept it: it’s somewhere in the attic, it's like a 5 meter long drawing of fairyland. as i've grown older, i've never really lost that. it's always stayed an obsession. as i got older i did more research into folklore and it's kinda my hyperfocus to collect all these stories, locally, or not locally. i went to an international school for 6 months and i had a little side project there where i interviewed people about fairytales from their local area. one day i'll turn it into a documentary. i love how all these stories, they're so different, but they connect, in a way that still makes me believe that they're all probably a little bit real.

k: i love that so much. thank you. you've published a lovely setting guide: into the hazelands. can you talk about how you found the hazelands and how did you get back?

t: i'm glad you said found. because i did find it. yeah, sometimes i'm thinking, is it real, or is it just an amalgamation of all the stories i love in my head? but every time that i write something or i create, i design characters, it doesn't feel like i'm making it up? It’s just like, it's somewhere there and i'm just trying to make the best representation of what it is like. there is a version of it that is real, and i'm trying to find what exactly it looks like. i don't know, i think i've probably always had it in my mind one way or another. i live quite close to a forest, and i just go into the forest with my dog, and i think definitely at some points i wasn't in the forest anymore, i was in the hazelands. i am very lucky to live very close to a bunch of castles. belgium has like the highest percentage of castles in the world oh my god my dog is really wet and just ran in.

k: it's very rainy here also, after a long time of not being rainy, and my dog looked like an absolute muppet this morning after i took him on a walk. i dried him and it just didn't even work at all?

t: no! just a mop! yeah belgium has the highest percentage of castles per square kilometers and i feel like every time i go to a castle i can just see all the things that used to be there and could be there, and i don't know...

k: just step right over the gate.

t: yeah! all these places, they're so close, this other world, and i feel like it is very location-based for me. where you go to a place and you're like oh, ok, we see a castle with some tourism info, but that's not all we see here, there's this whole other world and it's just behind this door, or underneath this table. yeah, that's what the hazelands feels like for me.

k: it's out there, not very far, and you're just trying to do your best to show it. that's very much how max and i have felt making this game, it's not even a matter of making decisions, it's almost like you just poke it a little bit and listen to it and see, did you get close.

t: yeah exactly, absolutely.

k: if you could purposely travel anywhere in the hazelands, where would you go?

t: traveling in the hazelands is so complicated, because everything changes and moves all the time. i've been really stuck on one story for so long. my friend made a map, these are some test prints on some fabric, so now i have a physical version, and i think when we started designing this map, i think definitely two years ago i started working on this story, and i was like ok yeah, the location of this story, let's put it in the middle, because that's going to be the most important thing. this story won't be in the book that i'm publishing now, because every time it's changed or grown so much, i don't know, it's such a complex story, and there's always quite a lot of my own feelings in this story, and a lot of those feelings, i haven't figured out yet, and i just kept rewriting and rewriting and adjusting and i think i'd like to go there, just to figure out what the story is. it's a little town, well quite a big town, called membury, and it's a place where people don't trade with any money, but people trade in memories. so, memories in the hazelands take the shape of birds when they’re outside of your mind, and you can trade them with people, and there’ s a strange figure who wanders the town at night who knocks on a random door every evening to ask for a valuable memory, and everyone could lose one of their treasured memories at any time, and that's why they care so much about memories and new experiences, and meeting new people and meeting new friends and making connections because they realize the most valuable thing is having a memory, but they could be taken away at any time.

k: i'm glad you mentioned birds, because my next question is about pigeons, and: what is it about pigeons?

t: well there's kind of one big religion in the hazelands - i'm so happy to talk about this - one big religion in the hazelands, and it's all about pod. once upon a time, they found a very tall tower in the hazelands, and it's so incredibly tall that no one knows who built it, or how tall it is, and what's on top of it, but they had a pretty good guess, that because there's usually pigeons on top of towers, that this tower would also have a pigeon, but because the tower is so tall it must be an extremely powerful and important pigeon who maybe created the world? maybe not? maybe he's destined to destroy the world? we have no idea what he wants, but this pigeon loves trinkets and will guide you on your way.

k: proper religion then.

t: everyone has a lot of different opinions about what pod wants, but the people who follow the pigeon, they mainly care about making good cheese, writing letters, delivering letters, exploring the world...

k: pigeon culture.

t: exactly. i connect with this especially because i used to own racing pigeons as a kid.

k: oh wow!

t: it's a very big thing in belgium, for old men, and because i was an old man at 9 years old, i owned racing pigeons. i had a little cabin in my garden. i think i had about 6 pigeons.

k: that's a good number of pigeons.

t: yeah! we'd bring them to a random spot, a different city, we'd release them, and they'd come back. i loved them very much. my parents didn't, because they shat everywhere.

k: abjurers of pod, of course.

t: my neighbor hated them as well because they shit all over his roof. but he did deserve it! so! pod's revenge!

k: the ways of pod are mysterious, but just.

t: i think you understand.

k: i like to think that i do.

POD

k: you've done a wonderful job with the rumpus fairies.

t: thank you.

k: and you've made 12, because that is how many drawings from brett we have, of the fairies, that play rumpus, but as you know (or maybe you don't), you can only choose 3 for your troupe, so i'm asking you to choose:

which 3 of your children would you select for your troupe?

t: i definitely have favorites. which you shouldn't have with your children.

k: shouldn't, but there are favorites.

t: there's one that's definitely not invited. and not only because i find him the creepiest, but because sculpting him was the hardest. i think he's one of the more fun ones to paint. but the one we had to resculpt, the toad man? i think we probably had to resculpt him because i just found him so creepy, i just couldn't figure out his energy.

k: i feel like he’s our most inscrutable fairy, for sure.

t: i feel like if he's in my party, he would ruin my life.

k: yeah they don't all listen to you, during the game. i think you are wise to avoid him.

t: do they have names? i named them five different things all the times. but there's the hobgoblin i think, with the big, furry...

k: with the broom

t: yeah, with the broom. i love him. he's got good energy. he would be quite supportive, whimsically supportive. and then there's this tiny guy, with the flag. i feel like he would have the best jokes. who would be the third? you need three. i feel like the strange donkey creature.

k: do you know the strange donkey creature was the first one that i tried to sculpt? and (laughing ruefully) it is one of the reasons we have asked you to sculpt the rumpus fairies.

t: i like that one! i feel like that one's the life of the party.

k: i love their dress so much. it's my favorite thing that any of them are wearing. although the bow on the tall guy is a close second.

t: oh yes the tall guy! can i have a fourth? because that would be the tall guy.

k: there actually is a way to get a fourth, do you want to hear what it is? well i'm going to tell you. each fairy, when you find them, you learn their names (and that's why they listen to you) and then you draw two items for each of them, those are their cherished possessions they are bringing to the court of the fairy king, and an item can be odd, when you draw it, there's a 1 in 3 chance that one of their items is odd, in which case there's something secret about it that you then discover, and an odd item can be folksy, which means it's actually also a fairy, so then it would be a fourth fairy.

t: i see!

k: and we know their forms are very elastic and they can look however they want to.

t: yes, i love the tall one.

k: we'll have to come up with model names for them that are not their true secret name that you discover at the beginning of the game, so maybe we can work together on that. i like to make them like one word, kind of clumsy names. that's why my fairies are called things like "tufty" and "mushrog" and things like that. but i think also, "the tall one".

t: yeah, "the tall one"! a lot of fairy names are like "jack-come-wednesday" and "tom thumb".

k: yeah that's a fantastic fairy name. we have a whole table where we've collected some of our favorites. one of my very favorite fairy names is "jenny greenteeth".

t: yeah that's a really good one.

k: so the rumpus fairy name table is kind of a mishmash of various fairy names from folklore, like robin go-lightly.

t: there's also that one image, from the witches familiars? do you know the one i mean? it has some great names.

k: i know exactly what you're talking about, it's like a pen and ink illustration.

t: like sniveling tom, sweet and salty? i don't know, i need to look it up now. you can have a familiar in the hazelands, there's a witch subclass, there's a whole list of familiar names as well. here it is: vinegar tom. sacke & sugar! pyewackett, jarmara, holt, and my favorite, griezzell greedigutt. pecke in the crowne. and i love the lady that says, "my imps names are: ilemauzar."

good ol' sacke & sugar

k: aaa very good! i have our name table here, we should reveal a fairy name, a name for the tall one. do you have a dice? i don't know if i have one.

t: i do!

k: you roll and tell me what you get. give me two numbers.

t: a 2 and a 6.

k: 2 and a 6: stodgy. each fairy has up to 3 names, and you smush them together to make their true name. ok, do it again.

t: 5 and a 4.

k: rum tum.

t: i love rum tum. a 3 and a 2.

k: mumpoker.

t: what!

k: one of the ruder ones. so your fairy's name is stodgy rum tum mumpoker.

t: mumpoker!

k: do you know about this fairy, the mumpoker?

t: i do not know about this fairy.

k: i think that this is a fairy that was to encourage children to stay in their beds after dark that would sneak up behind you, you know, mum, and get you! a quiet skulking fairy that would sneak up behind you in your house and get you. similar to the lowery, that would drop down from your ceiling or your chimney, to surprise you.

t: so creepy. to this day, i always turn on my bedside table light before i turn off the big lights. because i know if it's completely dark, they'll get me.

(we roll dice and reveal a second name)

k: wyrd puck tangle.

t: i feel like that's the weird donkey.

k: yeah with the braids.

(the third name)

K: ol' miles whiskers.

t: very good, very good. that's the guy with the broom.

TINE'S TROUPE, WITH VARIOUS AMOUNTS OF PAINT	NOT INVITED

k: now you know your fairies' names and now they will mostly listen to you. thank you for doing that with me. i wanted to ask you one more hazelands question if you don't mind.

if you were born in the hazelands, what would you be? and i don't know that you weren't born in the hazelands. but just pretend.

t: i feel like i'd like to be a fairy, but i'd probably be a hobgoblin. it's also a good thing, because i feel like fairies are a bit more like mysterious tricksters but they're also a bit meaner, but hobgoblins like to be in big families, they'll do anything as long as they do it together, they like a nice meal.

k: i think i'd like to be a elf, but i am actually a human. but i really enjoyed reading through them all, in the hazelands you have on itch.io.

TINE FIELDLING, A HOBGOBLIN

t: i've got lots more written up for the kickstarter, the one on itch is about 80 pages? now the kickstarter one, i still have to finish writing one or two creatures? but currently it's like 250 pages, it's a lot bigger. i think on the digital setting guide, there's fairy, elf, kinsfolk, and hobgoblin, and in the book i've added gnomes and trolls with the option to have a two-headed troll.

k: nice, do you have to have a friend who's willing to play a two-headed troll with you?

t: no, it kind of depends on the day to see if your smarter or your stronger head takes charge that day. i had a lot of fun playtesting that one, what i wrote up first was insane and not fun to play, it would entirely switch your stats around every time you flipped a coin...

k: i love that though.

t: a 1 in 2 chance, if you were playing a barbarian, that suddenly you'd have a 0 in strength, and a +3 in wisdom, and during a short rest you would flip, and suddenly you'd have a +3 in strength and a 0 in wisdom, and that was totally unplayable, but it was very fun. i like seeing my friends trying to roleplay the two heads, and then it's not just the dm that's talking to themselves in different voices, it's also the players, "no i don't want to do that!" "yes i will do that", very fun.

k: you're nigh on doing your kickstarter. you talked a little bit about getting your book ready. is it similar to digital sculpting, where you thought you were going to be a puppeteer, and then you discovered, i've found my way to digital sculpting?

how did you find yourself making a 250+ page book of illuminated manuscripts?

t: i thought as a kid i would probably be either a filmmaker or a writer. when i was 14, for a school project, i published a fantasy novel, which i think was also 130 pages or something, the same illustrator who is helping me out now is the illustrator who did illustrations for that book, now many years later we are still making fantasy books together. when i read it back now it is awful, but i was very proud that i was able to finish an entire novel, and it was definitely at that point i thought, ok, first one done, ten more now. and i'm not a terribly good writer, i'm very dyslexic, so the first draft especially of the hazelands book, the first draft is absolute chaos, especially because it's got rules and stuff. it's so chaotic because it's just random patches of writing: i have to go through it sentence by sentence to try and make it make sense and puzzle things together and shift things around. because it's not my first language, i have my partner help me out a lot, whose first language is english so when i'm like "is it ‘by’ or ‘of’ or ‘through’?", just like the inbetween words, i often mess up but i'm constantly reading my favorite books to try and get the writing in my brain. as soon as i played my first tabletop game, i think i was like ok i'm ready to do this for the rest of my life. i always wanted to tell stories and i think this is the best way, i'll just keep doing this then. i used to want to become a filmmaker and i did a few short films and the thing i liked about that is with film you've got a whole team around you and you're creating things together but it's quite a high pressure, sometimes toxic, competitive environment even though when you're on set you're all working together toward something and that's really fun. it's also really expensive, to get film, have all the cameras… some of the work environments are quite toxic and i find that the opposite in tabletop gaming. i've met such lovely people and i think being able to create something for your friends and playing the game together, and all of the friends i've made through tabletop gaming, i think that's one of the biggest reasons i want to do this for the rest of my life because every single person i've met through this has been the most wonderful person. that's also why i organize the event, kamping kitbash.

INTO THE HAZELANDS

k: can you talk about kamping kitbash for a bit?

t: it's a summer camp for adults who like tabletop games and wargames and miniatures and kitbashing and for a whole weekend we have fun, we do workshops, we do silly activities, i just had so much fun with the community and meeting people that was like, ok, i would like one weekend, like a big family gathering, where we all see each other and where we can meet new people, because there's like lots of cousins that you've never met, tabletop cousins, like i've never met them and i want everyone to be in the same place...

k: you ARE a hobgoblin

t: yes! i think like i did a few kitbashing days before events, like BOYL (bring out your lead), it's like an oldhammer event in nottingham, and we would meet up before BOYL, to paint our minis together, to kitbash our minis together, and then we would go to the event and play the games or buy stuff, and i always found that moment before or after the event much more fun, where you're hanging out and creating things, for the event, and i was like well maybe this should be the main event. because usually you do all the painting, you do it by yourself, before you play the game, which you do together, i think it's way more fun if you don't only play the game together but you also do the creating together, and kamping kitbash has given me the opportunity to think of a bunch of strange ways to get adults to be friends and make art together, basically.

k: yeah recently, jonathan brodsky, who is a fellow sculptor and game maker, we got together, with the entirely reasonable goal of sculpting 64 frogs in one day.

t: entirely reasonable.

k: yeah totally, you just do a frog every ten minutes. what is a frog? just 2 eyes, a big mouth, the rest of it, nobody even knows. we were like, we'll just keep up a good pace, and at the end of the day, we'll have 64 frogs. and we found that doing it together, that you egg each other on to make wilder and wilder decisions, and it's just so fun, not to be hunched over in your work light poking things with a little needle by yourself, you can do it together and decide to give your frog one shoe, or make a frog that's all tongue, it's great.

t: i'm someone who does struggle with the creative process sometimes, because i can be very self-critical, it's not good enough, and then i get really pissed off that it's not good enough. being able to work with other people and hyping each other up, because that's the most important thing, it doesn't matter if it's good or not, it matters if you're having fun.

k: goodness can be such an elastic goal too. i really struggle with, like i do so much rehearsal in my head, like ah this is how it's going to be, and do so much envisioning, i think it's easy for me at least to let myself down then if i produce something that's different and not be excited about the discovery, this new different thing, and then just having a horrible time constraint and a perfectly reasonable goal of doing a lot in one day just made it so, i cannot do it that way, i have to do it a different way. it was great.

t: i do love a random constraint, whether it's time or something else.

k: a big fan of numerological constraints too, like "IT HAS TO BE FOUR" or "IT'S NINE". in rumpus everything is nine, or it's three. or it's six. actually they're all just multiples of three in rumpus. every time we needed a number, we just tried different multiples until it worked. well 12 is too many? we'll try 6, let's try 9, let's try 3.

t: i also have 3 and 6, sometimes 7, and 12.

k: 7 is an important number. you've put 7 of something? that's like global quest type numbers. like sufjan stevens and the seven swans, which i assume are seven powerful swans that exist throughout our world, that you have to go talk to.

t: i think that's actually, isn't that the seven swans, it's a fairy tale? of a princess who gets the typical stepmom thing, where she gets a new stepmom and she hates the children, and she turns the seven brothers into seven swans, and she kicks out the princess, she tries to poison the princess, but she is able to get away, and she goes to look for her seven brothers, and i think she goes, i think she has a dream, because she's starving, and in the dream, some kind of imp creature is like well to turn your brothers back into humans you have to make them jumpers out of nettles, shirts out of nettles. she has to go to graveyards to go get nettles and then make shirts out of them and put them on her brothers, turn them back from swans.

k: i love the courage of putting more than three things in a fairytale, like someone was like, instead of three things, my fairytale has seven things, you're going to be here for awhile. like sit down. there's also so much shirtmaking in fairytales, i love it.

t: and shoemaking.

k: making clothes is very important. you don't hear enough stories nowadays where someone has to make a shirt in an impossible way or they have to make shoes in a perfectly reasonable amount of time.

t: honestly i've tried to get into clothesmaking: making a shirt is really difficult.

k: it's really hard!

t: it is! i can make a skirt, but that's about it. yeah i think with the hazelands i also try not to share too much about it because i want people to know just enough that they can find their own things and discover their own places and their own creatures. i really can't wait to release the book and hear about other people's adventures and encounters. i really hope that happens! it might be that no one buys it or that no one plays it. but i really hope they do.

k: where, if folks were thinking, after reading this interview, in this magazine, for a tabletop game about fairies, that hasn't come out yet, where can they find you? where, if they were like ah, i also am a hobgoblin. where can they find you?

t: mainly on instagram and youtube, @tine_fieldling, there's an extra l in there that a lot of people miss, including two magazines that i have been in.

k: well we'll get it. names are very important to us.

t: at least they can't control me, if they spell my name wrong. i'd love to post more youtube videos, but i only post youtube videos when i think they're good enough, and i don't think they're good enough unless i put a lot of time into them. i particularly like youtube because i feel like, people who do take the time to watch my 20 videos, they leave very nice comments, and they're like part of the community. i did tiktok for awhile, and it was just so, vluchtig, is in dutch, which sounds like there's no letters in it, it disappears so easily.

k: ah yeah. ephemeral?

t: yeah ephemeral! you only exist for 3 seconds on tiktok and people immediately hate you, or love you, but they only do it for 3 seconds, there's no community and then you're gone, that's what tiktok felt like to me. on instagram it's a little bit nicer, more of a community there.

k: thank you so much for talking to me about the hazelands, and fairies.

t: literally any time.

k: this was so fun, we'll have to do this again.

t: after my kickstarter launches, please. (laughs) thank you for wanting to chat to me! it was really, really nice.

---

tine fieldling: really, really nice.

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