stuffed stuff: Keepons ver.2 Created and stuffed on July 2011
This is the middle part of the blog post about bumping into Marek Michalowski (the co-creator of Keepon) at a beer and brats place in Brooklyn, and how I got to give him a plush Keepon two days later. It’s always super exciting to give a plush of something to its creator in person! The Keepon I gave to Derek 2 years ago was getting really worn out and dirty, so I decided to make two Keepons. One for Marek and one for Derek.
Keepon is made with just two spheres. It’s super simple, it shouldn’t take too long, right? Yes and no. Because it’s so simple, If something is off even by 1/16 inch, it can make a big difference on Keepon. So throughout the process, I was staring at a reference photo, making sure the proportion and the position of the eyes and nose was right.
There were a couple of things I changed for the 2nd version of Keepon. The previous Keepon had trouble standing on its own, so this time, I put plastic pellets inside the bottom sphere so he could stand. I was going to glue pieces of felt for the eyes and nose like the first one but I realized that I had plastic doll eyes at the right size in my “eye stock”, so I used them this time. I wish I had solid black eyes for the eyes instead of slightly brown eyes though. But aside from that, I think it came out better than the last time. The new yellow fleece I got was closer to the color of an actual Keepon, and I’m pretty happy with it.
You can kind of see a tint of brown in the eye. Also I wish it were flatter.
As I was giving the plush Keepon to Marek, I realize that the actual Keepon and my plush Keepon was almost exact same size. I was just going by the scale of the surroundings in various Keepon videos but I was surprised how close it was. Never thought I’d have a chance to give him a plush Keepon in person!
Plush Keepon (on the right) meets the real Keepon! (on the left)
I know I haven’t blogged recently but that’s because I’ve been sewing pretty much non-stop to make plushes for PAX Prime at the end of August. But something amazing happened past week, and I think the event definitely deserves a post.
It was a nice and breezy Friday afternoon, Derek and I were hanging out with our friends and decided to go to a beer and brats place, called Der Schwarze Kölnerin Brooklyn. The place is about a 15 minute walk from our place, and the inside is pretty spacious. Also there’s seating outside, and their beer and brats were pretty damn good.
We chose the outside seating area. And as I was sitting down, I noticed a young man sitting next to us had a bag with a Keepon badge. If you’ve been reading my blog, you probably know that Derek and I are huge fans of Keepon. (read about Keepon on the official site, BeatBots.net.) Derek loved it so much that I made him a plush Keepon for his birthday two years ago. So I tapped the young man’s shoulder and said “Nice Keepon badge!” I can’t remember the exact word of his response but it was something like “Thanks. I made Keepon.” I was actually going to ask him where he got the badge but his response totally blew me away. He was the programmer/co-creator of Keepon, Marek Michalowski himself!
O_O
or, perhaps
(o.o) suits better.
I knew that he was in NYC for the Robot Film Festival that weekend. I was very tempted to go so he could sign the photo of my Keepon bento. But it’s a film festival after all and I wasn’t sure if I could actually meet him in person by just going there. I told him about Keepon bento I made before, and he said “Oh you’re AnnaTheRed!”
He was super nice and gave us Keepon stickers! And not only that, he invited us to the screenings of winning films and Robo-BBQ!
A sticker which will never be used.
He was having a meeting, so we wished him luck on the festival and we enjoyed our beer and brats.
We each had a 1 liter (33.81 oz) of beer. I realized that I wouldn't even drink that much water in one sitting.
A shot to show off Derek's macro lens
Their pretzels and bread were crunchy on the outside but SUPER SOFT on the inside!
Assorted brats and cheese
Curry ketchup was delicious! I'll definitely try this at home.
Some kind of super cheesy condiment
I didn’t realize it at the time but the lady who was sitting with him was Heather Knight! She runsMarilyn Monrobot, which creates socially intelligent robot performances and sensor-based electronic art. And she also built part of the Rube Goldberg Machine in OK Go‘s music video, “This Shall Too Pass.” (She did the first 2 minutes)
On Sunday, we got to the 3LD Art & Technology Center around 3:00 PM, went in, and saw Marek in the theater among many robot loving people. Just like the other day, he was very friendly. And we finally got to meet the real Keepon! Seeing/meeting Keepon in person was one of my geek dreams and I just couldn’t believe it really came true. His body was more rubbery than I imagined, but I just couldn’t stop pinching him. Oh and yeah, he was definitely more handsome in person. It is truly amazing that two balls with eyes and a nose can make people see a variety of expressions on Keepon’s face. I gave Marek the plush Keepon I made. It’s no real Keepon of course but he seemed psyched to see Keepon in a plush form.
The real Keepon on the left, plush Keepon on the right
It was magical, like Luke meeting Darth Vader. Without all that dark side stuff.
I wrote a “stuffed stuff” post about the Keepon plush ver.2 here so check it out if you’re interested.
And yes, I got his autograph on my Keepon bento photo!
We chatted, made robot hats from tin foil (as it was required), had a hotdog and beers, and watched the winning robot films.
We made a borg hat for our Keepon.
Among many robot films, the one I really liked was a documentary of Astrobotic Techonology, called Moonrush. I’m a robot fan but also a huge space nerd. I could watch hours and hours of any space related documentaries. Astrobotic Techonology make robots which can be used in space. With NASA closing the space shuttle program, perhaps we can send as many robots as possible into space to explore.
It was a truly amazing afternoon for me and Derek. I love meeting the people behind an amazing creation, whether it’s a video game, robot, art or food. They are far more amazing and important to me than “normal” celebrities. I’m fascinated by their talent, thought processes and passion for what they do. And meeting and talking to creative people like Marek or Dan Paladin (the head artist of the Behemoth) or Mike and Jerry (from Penny Arcade) inspire me to keep creating.
I wish Marek, Keepon and BeatBots the best on their future projects. And I hope to see Keepon in action next time!
I don’t usually get excited about social networking services. I started Twitter because it’s simple and low-maintenance. So I was actually reluctant about using Google+ at first, but after my friend explained it, it actually sounded interesting, so I decided to give it a try.
For those who aren’t familiar with Google+, it’s a new SNS and many people agree that it’s like Facebook but “better.” The reason I don’t do Facebook, except for my fan page, is that it’s difficult to organize the people on your list. If I were to have a Facebook account, before I posted anything I’d have to consider if my close friends, acquaintances, family members, Japanese friends, and strangers would all enjoy or care what I was posting about. In my old office, I had a friend who’d send whatever he thought was cool or funny to EVERYONE on his friend list on instant messenger. Sometimes it was funny and sometime it’d make me go “Um…” A lot of us just stopped clicking his links. On my IM, I had a group of people I’d send anything cat related to.
In short, you can make your posts public or only available to certain circles of people. Your circles can be for your friends, acquaintances, family, people you’re following, etc…
Anyway, it’s easier to try and see it for yourself than me explaining it badly. Google+ is now by an invitation only, so if you want me to invite you, feel free to email me at AnnaTheRed[at]gmail.com (with a subject “Invite me!” or something)
Since it’s still in beta, I don’t think I’ll put anything Google+ exclusives there though. But more silly stuff, like these videos below.
We decided to try out Kinect Fun Labs the other day. Which is a series of mini applications for Kinect. They’re free but some of them look like they should’ve come with Kinect when it was released (especially Googly Eyes and BobbleHead) but Make-a-Buddy is a lot of fun. You can scan the back and front of an object with a Kinect sensor, and it’ll create a 3D model of it. I see a lot of potential with this 3D modeling technology. Hope someone makes a good use of it.
Here are some videos we took with my camera after we scanned our plushes.
First off, Keepon with a pink top hat. (See “stuffed stuff: Keepon”) You can see Derek making it move on the right bottom corner, that’s Kinect detecting his moves.
I always say I don’t do requests on bento and food, but when I get curious about something I have to try it!
Non-bento #43: Omusoba-pan Created and eaten: 6/4/2011
One blog reader, reece, commented on “Non-bento #41: Twisp and Catsby cheeseburgers” about how she likes Omusoba-pan from the anime show, “the World Only God Knows.” “Omu” is a short for “omelette” in Japan and people love putting food inside omelettes and calling them “Omu-whatever the food inside.”
As I wrote in my reply, I’ve heard of Omusoba which has yakisoba noodles inside the omelette, and yakisoba-pan which has yakisoba noodle in bread. (In Japan, people use the French term for bread “pain”, pronounced “pan.”) But I had never heard of Omusoba-pan. I googled it and found out that a character in the World Only God Knows does indeed eat “Omusoba-pan” in the show.
Back then I couldn’t find anything about Omusoba-pan, but later I did find some photos of the actual omusoba-pan! So I’m sorry, reece, I lied! It does exist!
Many Japanese anime shows have scenes where characters are eating food. Derek and I love when people eat food in anime or real films especially when the food looks tasty. In fact, our fascination about the food in anime/films made us do the “three days of Ghibli feast”, where I recreated food from Ghibli films. To read about Ghibli Feast, check out these posts!
Anyway, this Omusoba-pan seemed very easy to make. I still had some hot-dog buns from “Non-bento #42: Hot-Dog Fairy”, and doing all the research made me want to eat yakisoba noodles.
So I went out and got yakisoba noodles, cabbage, and veggies. I stir fried them together, mixed it with sauce, made yakisoba noodles, and I put it in a hot dog bun. Then I made an egg sheet (see “how to make an egg sheet”) and wrapped the hot dog bun with yakisoba noodles. I put on some ketchup and seaweed powder and it was done!
I made yakisoba from scratch, but you can easily get an instant yakisoba at an Asian supermarket or even on Amazon.com.
I had to make sure to hold the omelette carefully as I ate it. I suppose it’d be easier to eat in a plastic bag but then it’d mess up the ketchup. It was very good though. It’s funny that there are many breads in Japan that have noodles in them. It’s like you’re eating a pasta burger. It does make it easy to eat noodles with one hand though.
For Derek, I made a plain omusoba and he loved it!
It sure is fun to recreate food from anime/films. Perhaps it’s time for another Ghibli feast or something similar…
For more pictures of my bento, visit Bento and non-bento! set and Bento details! set on my flickr page. (On the photos in the “Bent and non-bento!” set on my flickr, you can see the notes on the food explaining what they are.)
Derek and I already had a little celebration yesterday. Because yesterday, July 3rd, was my birthday.
Derek draws a birthday card for me every year. (It's my cat Inari, me and him on our sofa.) He also fills inside with sweet words in Japanese and makes me teary every year.
Most people are away during this long weekend, so I usually spend a day doing things I like doing with Derek on my birthday. I don’t really stress out about doing something special on my birthday. Last year, we went to see three movies, ate ramen, and played video games. This year, I got nice bottles of shochu from Derek. One is awamori rice shochu from Okinawa called Zuisen, another one is sweet potato shochu from Kagoshima called Ikkokumon. They are both very popular in Kyushu, the land of shochu. But because of their unique & strong flavor, some shochu lovers aren’t too found of them. They don’t know what they’re missing.
"Zuisen" - awamori shochu from Okinawa
Ikkokumon - sweet potato shochu from Kagoshima
This year, we went to our friend’s house because their daughter also shares the same birthday as me. I haven’t seen so many kids (age ranging from infant to 5-year old) and toys on the floor at one time in my life. While the parents took a break, Derek and I, the childless couple, became their playmates. Derek and I get along with kids well. My favorite things to do with kids is to ask them as many questions as possible before they can ask me anything.
By the time we got home, we were pretty wiped. So we just decided to stay in and bake a cake.
I don’t bake much because I don’t eat that many sweets in general, but because of this, I had bought a small cake mold (5-inches in diameter) in case I wanted to bake a cake just for us.
We measured everything, sifted, mixed, folded, etc… poured the batter in a mold, stuck it in the oven and prayed. To our surprise, the sponge cake came out SUPER SPONGY! We were very excited to see such a fluffy success. It smelled so good too. I sliced it into three layers so there’d be two layers of strawberries with whipped cream. This made the cake really tall. It looked more like a tower than a cake. I didn’t expect the cake to be so fluffy, so I might have put too much batter into the mold because I was worried that it’d be too flat to have layers. Still a cake is a cake. I proceeded to coat the cake with the rest of the whipped cream. I didn’t have enough whipped cream to make it all fancy but I’m the one eating it and I mostly certainly didn’t care what it looked like as long as it had tons of strawberries.
sweet success
I didn’t eat the cake right away though. I kept the cake in the fridge over night so the whipped cream would settle. Derek and I ate the first piece this morning and it was absolutely delicious!
We were very happy with the result. The sweetness of the nice cool sponge cake and the whipped cream was just right, and the strawberries were very refreshing. I guess it’s not bad to bake a small cake once in a while. It’s a lot less pressure when the mold is small and I have even a smaller cake mold 4-inches in diameter. Maybe I should bake more often and practice…
For more photos of this blog post, check out Happy Birthday to ME! set on my flickr.
ABOUT ME I was born in Japan, lived in New York for a while and now living in San Diego, California. I love creating things with my hands in my free time whether it’s making character bento or stuffing stuff! And now I'm working for The Behemoth, the most awesome video game company in history! Read more!
I was born in Japan, lived in New York for a while and now living in San Diego, California. I love creating things with my hands in my free time whether it’s making character bento or stuffing stuff! And now I'm working for 
