Bottom of the Bitz Box: Festival Rumpus 2 Community Challenge

Community challenges are one of my favorite ways to expand my creativity. Often the subject matter is outside of my normal scope. This year I was excited to participate in Festival Rumpus. Festival Rumpus is a challenge to create a miniature, board or other project inspired by the game Rumpus by Kyle Reimergartin and Max Moon. The Game Center’s around fairies, whimsical game boards and fun gameplay. I had the opportunity to play Rumpus with Kyle using a warband run by Dellon and myself. I had such a great time playing, I knew I needed to create some fairies to play.

I really enjoyed my Entry for Entmoot (a community challenge from earlier this year) and wanted to use the miniature I created as my jumping off point. The challenge was to create an Ent using sticks from right outside your house. Since it was winter it was slim pickings for sticks but I created a weird spider Ent carrying the forest on its back. Ever since I made this, I knew I wanted to revisit this concept.

To get started, I first opened my bits box and box full of extra miniatures to start my search. Specifically I was looking for spider miniatures or other arachnids. Quickly I found a few different options that I could use as the base model for my fairy war band. I knew I wanted to have one miniature be the focal point. That miniature would be the leader of my band of fairies.

The basis of this miniature is a WizKids drider. I cut the figure off the front and kept the spider body. Next I searched my bits bin and found pieces of dryad bits from various kits. I also found this casted head of an old man that was given to me by a friend. After the bits were added, I started to hot glue the sticks to the back of the spider.

Since the hot glue and various material materials did not look cohesive, I used a mixture of textures to hide bad seeming and overzealous use of super glue. This mixture mostly consists of coffee grounds and teabags and I experimented with using old flocked grass that I’ve had for 14 years. I really liked how the flock looks on the side of the sticks very similar to moss growing in the forest.

Rumpus requires three fairies to play the game, I began kit bashing two smaller fairies to accompany my larger model. I used smaller twigs to fill out the back of the miniature and similar dryad bits along with the mix of textures to create a cohesive figure. As I was kit bashing, the story started to come together. I saw the old man’s face on the central character as a wise wizard corrupted by magic of the fairy.

The next step was painting all three models. First, I took the models outside and spray-painted them with matte black paint. After they dried, I brought them inside to pick my color pallete. I wanted the palette to be similar to my first model, but with the color saturation increased. In my usual style, I selected a triad of colors to work with. Starting out I dry brush the model with a blue purple (one of my favorite colors). After two layers of dry brushing with blue purple, I dry brushed the model with green as my mid tone. Using the green, I emphasize key features of the model to draw the eye in. After the green dried, I used a smaller brush with a bright yellow to highlight smaller details and to draw the viewer to the face . I unfortunately forgot to take photos of me painting because I was so excited with how the models were turning out.

Once I knew I was happy with the color pallete on the large model, I moved on to painting the smaller accompanying models. Both were painted using the same methods as the larger model, but with smaller brushes, I really liked how all three fairies look displayed next to each other, and this is really where the story of these fairies came together

Alrdic the Alchemist dedicated his life to the pursuit of magic. In his explorations, he discovered that fairy bones could be used to prolong life. To prove his hypothesis correct, he crafted two homunculus to follow him around. Driven by this knowledge, he ventured deep into the woods to hunt fairies, grinding their bones into fine dust. This act enraged the Court of the Fae, who cursed him, declaring that if he ever returned to the woods, he would become one with it.

The next time he set out to hunt, he became lost and disoriented. As darkness enveloped the forest, panic set in. He wandered deeper, he felt his legs grow heavier, moss creeping over his clothes, and branches entwining around his shoulders. After what felt like days, perhaps even weeks, he transformed, becoming more forest than man doomed to wander the woods for eternity.