Dear Maurice Sendak

Thank you for the wonderful stories.

Thank you for the scary stories.

Thank you for the wild rumpus.

Rest in peace, Mr. Maurice Sendak.

Bento #65: Where the Wild Things Are #2, Created and eaten on 10/6/2009

Non-bento #19: Where the Wild Things Are, Created and eaten on 10/13/2009

How to make Max, 10/17/2009

How to make Moishe, 10/16/2009

How to make veggie Moishe, 10/16/2009

How to make Bernard, 10/15/2009

How to make Emil, 10/15/2009

How to make Tzippy, 10/14/2009

How to make Aaron, 10/14/2009

Left side - Moishe, Bernard, Max

Right side - Aaron, Emil, and Tzippy

Bento#32: Where the Wild Things Are, Created and Eaten on 12/27/2008

This blog post is going to be about why I haven’t been blogging… But wait! I have something cool to show you!

I’ve been working my butt off at the Behemoth to bring awesome plushy products of the Behemoth characters. But these things take time… Still, I thought it’d be sad not to have anything to show at PAX East in Boston which took place between 4/6 ~ 4/8.

So I decided to make 20 hats of the bloody bear from Castle Crashers to be sold at the Behemoth booth at PAX East as the very first official plushy products of the Behemoth.

That’s right. I made each one by hand. TWENTY of them!

This hat idea didn’t sprout overnight. Actually, a couple of years ago when I was still just a fan of The Behemoth (still am!) they asked me if I wanted to make a prototype for them. I squealed in joy for about 3 minutes and accepted the project. Over the course of couple of years, we went through many prototypes with different shapes and different fabrics.

Never before seen concept art for the hat!

Ushanka hat prototype - fleece

Ushanka hat prototype - fake fur ver.1 w/ cotton lining

Ushanka hat prototype - fake fur ver.2 w/ cotton lining

Ushanka hat prototype - fake fur ver.3 w/ fleece lining

Ushanka hat prototype - fake fur ver.4 w/ fleece lining

Never before seen concept art for the hat! Take 2

Long story short, after I became a full-time employee and moved to San Diego, we decided to use already-made fake fur trooper hats (we called them “Ushanka”  which are the same type of hat in Russian) to make couple dozens of hats as a “test run.”

I’ve made multiples of a plush before. 15 HotDog Fairies for random Enforcers at PAX, 7 Plush Pyth for the Supergiant Games’ staff, 3 Golden Whales for the Behemoth’s staff, etc… but never made 20 of something. Granted the hat was already made, it still was a time consuming task.

This is the hat I used.

I had to remove the flap on the front first.

Using a ripper, I took the flap off... This seemingly easy task took forever!

The flap is finally off.

I turned the flap inside out, and traced the shape of the ear.

For the inner part of the ear, I cut pink fleece and sewed it onto the ear.

I sewed it on the fur side, using zig-zag stitches.

Put the backside and sewed it together. Why so many pins? Sewing fur can be tricky. They are to keep the sew line where you want it to be.

Cutting the excess fabric around the ear while being careful not to cut too close to the sew line. Otherwise, the fur near the seam will be a lot shorter than the fur around it.

And turning it inside out...

Taking the fur out of the seam. I know there's a special brush for this but I just use the back of my huge ass needle.

And one ear is done!

Now repeat that 39 more times!

Then I marked where the ears would go, cut slits, put the ears in and sewed it up.

I didn’t have time to take photos but believe me, it was NOT EASY to sew four layers of fake fur.

I cut felt into the shape of the blood stains, pinned each piece on the front and sewed it on with a sewing machine. This was the MOST time consuming part. That’s 4 blood stain pieces for one hat, that means 80 pieces for 20 hats! Not only that, the fur would get in the way so I had to keep the fur away from the needle as I sewed.

Testing two different types of blood stains. I decided to go with the left one.

After all the blood stains were sewed on, I sewed the seam close.

To make these hats extra special, I hand stitched a number on each hat.

This is what it looked like in my hotel room in Boston the day before PAX East.

Our travel buddies just couldn't resist to trying them!

Since these were hand-made and super limited, hats were priced at $60, and all proceeds would go to Wigs for Kids.

Wigs for Kids is a non-profit organization which helps kids who lost hair due to chemotherapy, burn accidents or other medical conditions to get a wig made with human hair. You can also donate your hair (must be longer than 12-inches). See how you can help on their website! http://www.wigsforkids.org

Also since the Behemoth loves the Penny Arcade guys and their charity Child’s Play, we decided to donate one hat signed by Dan Paladin and Tom Fulp to the Child’s Play’s dinner auction.

Super special Ushanka hat for Child's Play dinner action signed by Dan Paladin! (I got it signed by Tom Fulp later but I totally forgot to take a photo of it. T_T)

I was attending PAX East, and not working at the booth. And I must say I was a bit nervous of what people would think of the hats… So I was pleasantly super surprised when I was told that all 19 hats had sold out within 2 hours after they opened!

Whenever I saw someone wearing the hat, I wanted to hug them!! (but I restrained myself because I didn’t want to get kicked out of PAX East.)

Finished Ushanka hat!

We are planning to make this hat into a product but we don’t know when it will be. The final products will probably be more affordable but different from this limited version and won’t be numbered.

I think I can say that my very first official product from the Behemoth was a success!!!

Hopefully I can bring more of the Behemoth characters into stuffed stuff form in the future.

More PAX East related stuffed stuff posts to come…!

This is something I made last year when I was traveling back and forth between San Diego and New York City.

Non-bento #45 : Sweet Roll from Skyrim
Created and eaten on: 12/26/2012

All pictures of the Sweet Roll look pretty much the same. So I’m going to splash this blog post with the Skyrim related photos taken with my cellphone. Sorry for the super low quality of the photos. (At the time I was taking photos just to share them with my friends.)

Hi my name is Tonkotsu Ramen. I'm an Argonian and Dragonborn.

I don't like when people call me a Lizard. I might shout at them if they do.

I had never played the Elder Scrolls games before because it sounded a game that I’d love… I’d love it so much that I’d never stop playing. So when everyone was going crazy about the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, I declared that I would not play it.

At my temporary place in SD the internet connection was so slow that it was very hard for me to do a blog post with photos. So to spend my free time more effectively, I got my TV shipped and brought my Xbox 360 with me.

I was weak. I was alone and craved entertainment. Then I thought “Hmm maybe this is the best time for me to play a game that’s super long… Maybe something like Skyrim.”

A man casually standing while blood gushes out of his lower back.

From his angle, it looks like he's got a huge warhammer stuck in his crotch where the blood is coming out.

My quest log quickly grew long, especially side quests because I’d just accept any quests. I’d collect ingredients, steal things, deliver goods and letters, kill someone, etc… for others. Why? Because I’m a Dragonborn! I’m capable of doing things!!! I’d even solve people’s relationship problem in my precious Dragonborn time while I wasn’t killing dragons.

"Curtain Thermal Insulated" was one tough quest.

I really don’t think that’s how you play Skyrim. I’m playing something else in Skyrim. I feel like I don’t even care if I beat it or not. I’m not even sure of that myself. That’s how scary Skyrim is.

Proof that an arrows do not only go in the knees in Skyrim. (And a possibility of the existence of war-unicorn.)

ANYWAY, there are many foods in Skyrim and one of the famous foods is the Sweet Roll. The most famous one is probably the one by Gourmet Gaming. This isn’t particularly hard to make. It’s basically a bundt cake or pastry with icing on the top. Some people made Sweet Rolls on their own and I usually don’t make things other people already made, but I just couldn’t resist this one. Also I wanted to show it to my poor Skyrim playing friends.

I had a mini-bundt cake mold I bought a while ago. It wasn’t the exact same shape as the Sweet Roll, but it was close enough. I baked a bundt cake with the mold, and let it cool down. While I waited, I made icing. This icing is made just with confectioner’s sugar (powder sugar) and a very small amount of water and mixed with an electric hand mixer.

When the cake was completely cooled down, I carefully put the icing on it using a screenshot of a Sweet Roll as reference. I love how the icing came out very shiny. And also it was easy to control the thickness of the icing. The only thing I didn’t like about this icing was that it was SUPER SWEET. After all it’s just a lot of sugar and water. If I make this again, I’ll use a different kind of icing.

This Sweet Roll wasn’t exactly a “kyaraben” but more like my Ghibli Feast where I recreated food from Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli films. It was super easy and FUN.

I’m not sure when/if I’ll ever finish playing Skyrim but at least I had a great time making a Sweet Roll!

Oh and for those who haven’t noticed I now have a Tumblr blog! I was getting tired of seeing so many of my photos reblogged on Tumblr with no links back to the original posts so I decided it was time to get on there. So for those of you who are on Tumblr, please follow me! When I don’t have new posts I’ll be posting old photos of previous entries so that you can easily share and reblog for your friends to see!

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.)

EDIT: I thought the post was too boring so I added some photos I took with my cellphone during the moving period! Sorry for the quality of the photos but I thought it’d be better than nothing.

I’m going to take advantage of Oscar night and do a quick post about not so exciting stuff about the move.

We physically moved from NY to SD on the 30th of January, and we got our stuff delivered to our new place the following week and we are 2/3rds done with unpacking right now!

My precious toys were packed very carefully.

My Castle Crashers figures, all autographed by Dan Paladin. Back then I never though that I'd be working with him!

We had to say good-bye to this Castle Crashers head piece I made a couple of years ago.

I let Derek do the dirty work.

Sad sad day.

Our old apartment in Brooklyn 98 % empty!

Our last ramen at minca in NYC. The waitress got teary which made me teary.

Our last bagel from Terrace Bagel in Brooklyn.

Inari in a carrier at the airport. She did sooooo well, I'm very proud of her!

Pizza we had after we moved to SD... Our journey to find a NY style pizza in SD seems grim.

Also, I learned that they sneak cucumber into water in SD. This seemingly plain water was infused with cucumber juice. (My co-workers realized it before I drank. THANK GOD.)

We are still adjusting to the changes, but we are also excited about our new life!

I finally got to hang my Christopher Walken life-mask sculpture on the wall in the bathroom at our new place! It's hanging above the toilet tank so boys will have to face him.

The view from our roof deck isn't too shabby. Oh who I'm kidding, we LOVE it!

Since I came to the U.S.I moved a LOT within the state of New York  but I don’t think I will ever like moving.

I do intend to do a longer post involving advice on “moving/flying with a diabetic pet” later because I desperately looked for any “personal stories” about flying with a diabetic pet prior to this trip, but I could only find a few.

Anyway, back to the Oscars, I’m SUPER disappointed that Sword Master Bob Anderson was NOT shown in the Memoriam during the Oscars. Shame on you Academy. SHAME ON YOU!!!

It is incredibly sad to lose someone who is so talented. You will be missed Mr. Bob Anderson.

For those who never heard of Bob Anderson, he was THE GREATEST sword master/choreographer who worked on, Star Wars (he was Darth Vader when he was fighting in the costume), Highlander, the Princess Bride, the Lord of the Rings, Pirates of Caribbean, etc…

CBS disabled the option to embed the video so I’m going to post a link here but it is worth watching if you’re a film enthusiast!

Remembering Bob Anderson

I hope everyone has wonderful plans for Valentine’s day tomorrow! And I’m glad to see that my heart-shaped egg article is going around the world to spread LOVE! Derek and I celebrated it a day earlier by playing the Mass Effect 3 demo because we snatched an early code. We are so psyched for Mass Effect 3!

I was going to make a quick “Hey we’re done moving!” post so I could start blogging about food again but I’d like to talk about something a bit more serious before I get into that.

Recently, I was told that someone made a plush of a certain video game character which I previously made for my dear friend. I thought “oh cool” and checked out this person’s Deviant Art page. That’s when I went “Hmm…”

It was EXACTLY THE SAME DESIGN.

I worked SUPER HARD to simplify the design of the very complicated costume on this plush, so I could tell when the design was EXACTLY THE SAME when I saw it. But I thought, hey, it’s fan art, and this person did actually make it. It’s not like they stole my photos. I should be flattered, right??? But surprise surprise!

This person is making it and SELLING IT on Etsy.

Not. Cool.

Now here’s the tricky part.

I do not own the rights to the character, so I cannot claim copyright infringement for the person’s stuff on Etsy. And even though I designed the patterns, this person did have to figure everything out from looking at the each photo my flickr site, which was tedious I’m sure… so kudos to that!

But putting it on Etsy? Seriously?

This almost makes me want to NOT put tons of detailed photos of my plushes anymore…

Personally, whether this person makes a profit or not doesn’t concern me at all. I’m a professional plush designer now and have the utmost respect for the craft of fellow artists. I would NEVER sell plushes of copyrighted characters on Etsy.

BUT the problem is that this person’s plush is almost IDENTICAL to mine, and I just NEVER want other people to associate me with this person. I thought I was crazy so I asked my friends to look at it and they confirmed that I’m not crazy.

If you’ve been reading my blog, you’ll probably notice which plush I’m talking about if you see it on Etsy. I don’t want to put a link to the page here, but I did send the person a link to this post. I really hope the person reads it and realizes something… Or maybe they won’t. (which can be very possible)

I’m usually a happy-go-lucky/pleasant-cute-thing-loving person but when I see something that’s not fair, I’ll say something and make sure the other side hears it too.

If the person in question wants to discuss the matter with me via email, explaining how I’m wrong, feel free to do so.

My email is annathered(at)gmail.com

Wow, did I sound bitter?

*reading my blog again*

NOPE.

Did I have to make such a huge deal about this?

*reading my blog AGAIN*

YUP.

I despise people who don’t understand the value of creativity. I’m also just fed up the fact that Etsy doesn’t regulate their contents at all.

tl;dr I despise people who don’t understand the value of creativity.

BUT I really DO appreciate people who are purely inspired to make creative food or plushes for their own enjoyment after seeing it on my blog. So don’t be scared and send me your food/plush to me at annathered(at)gmail.com !

UPDATE: 2/14/2012

Here’s a little update.

I did send the person (henceforth referred to as “them”) a mail via Etsy yesterday. But I decided to email them just in case they don’t check their Etsy account often. As I was typing their email address I saw on the Deviant Art page, it auto-completed.

“Hm?” I thought.

I searched through my old emails and lo and behold. They had previously emailed me asking about some basic stuff about making plushes. And I had replied them with some advice.

This made me sick.

I was doing it out of kindness. I’ve helped many people with their plush projects via emails. And this is what I get.

And if they read my blog, it should be crystal clear that I am extremely against selling a plush of copyrighted character, no matter how much people beg.

I have no idea what they think of this post since they haven’t gotten back to me yet.

I often hear fan art sellers say “But there are people who really want this thing. And the copyright holder will never make it. So why can’t I make it? And while I’m at it, why not get compensated for it? I did do the work for it.”

If someone thinks that way, they can never understand how I feel no matter how much I try to explain.

By the way, to make things clear I’m not against fan art. I’m all for fan art! Just think of/like the original creators when you make it.

UPDATE: 2/14/2012

Well, not really an update. But while we we’re on the subject, I’d like to introduce you to one of my favorite websites which points out people ripping off other people’s work. (too bad that it hasn’t updated in a while.)

you thought we wouldn’t notice

stuffed stuff: Costume Quest (Wren and Reynold)
created and stuffed: August 2011~Jan 2012

Before PAX Prime in 2011, I made a ton of plushes to give away. You could see the plush madness in this post.

Pre-PAX at home

One of the plushes was for Tasha Harris who worked at Double Fine at the time.

I tweeted this photo from PAX Prime 2011.

She was project lead for one of my favorite XBLA games, Costume Quest (now also magically available for PS3 and PC!). I really love the game and her art style. I liked it so much that I even made a bento of Costume Quest before.

Bento #79: Costume Quest

Anyway, I was going to make Wren and Reynold from the game’s cover art. (like the bento) Wren in a knight costume and Reynold in a robot costume. But I thought two costumes would be a bit boring, so I also picked the French fries costume and the Statue of Liberty costume.

To make patterns for the body, I used a plush Link from “The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker” as reference. Of course, I had to make their head BIGGER than Link. Initially I was going to make the hair more like a helmet made of felt. But I really liked how the front part of Link’s hair was made. So after MANY MANY trials and errors I finally figured out the shape of the hair and lightly stuffed it to give it nice volume.

Much better than a single layer felt hair

Once the hair was done, I cut pieces for their eyes (which also took a while to get to the right size and shape) and glued them on. I was worried that the edge of the eyes would peel off so I sewed around the eyes to reinforce them.

You can see the inner side of the hair from this angle.

After the base body was made I made patterns for the costume by cutting pieces of paper, and wrapping them around the head and body. First I made the inner clothes with stretchy cotton to be worn under the costumes, which wasn’t too hard. I wanted to make the costume easy and simple, so I used felt. It’d be like making clothes for a paper doll, right??

It totally wasn’t.

I realized that the edge of the felt would stretch when you put the clothes on and off. Not good… Then things quickly got a lot more complicated.

For the knight costume (which was the easiest one) I had to reinforce the neck part and the arm holes by sewing another layer of felt underneath. Then I sewed the red lines onto it and attached Velcro on the back. After that I made the helmet, sword and shield. The sword and shield were easy but it took a few prototypes to make the helmet because it had to be the right shape and size to look right when worn by the doll.

The edges around the dark pieces were all hand sewn..

Unlike Link, Wren is right handed.

Trash can lid shield

I'm very proud of this medieval lion logo!

Wren in a knight costume

For the robot costume, one layer of felt was too weak to keep its shape, so I had to double-layer it. Just like the knight costume, I reinforced around the neck and the arm holes. I also had to sew around the edges of the torso so it’d keep its boxy shape. As I was trying the costume on and off on the doll, I noticed that the tiny blue fuzz from felt was getting on the doll’s face. So I came up the idea of putting a thin cotton liner inside. Then I made the antenna with black pipe cleaner and black and red fleece and sewed it onto the head piece. I added a chest plate and wings on the back and sewed Velcro onto the body and head piece.

You can kind of see the lighter blue liner inside.

So many visible sewing lines... :/

Chest plate

And you can't forget the wings on a robot.

Did you know that it's not easy to make hands with the palm side down on a plush doll?

The base of the antenna could be better, but it works.

Reynold in a robot costume

For the French fries costume, I used the robot’s body pattern as a guide, and made the box part of the French fries. Again, one layer was too flimsy so after I sewed the patterns onto the box, I had to add another layer and reinforced the same areas like the knight’s and robot’s costumes. I wish I could’ve found a way to make the box keep its shape without having so many visible sewing lines… Just like the robot costume, I was adding layers and reinforcing as I made it. I definitely need to learn how to make clothes and costumes properly. Making the French fries was super fun though! To finish it off, I sewed each French fry onto the box.

Back - Oh noes the sewing lines!!

Front - Could be boxier?

French fries could be crispier.

French fries

Wren in a French fries costume

For the Statue of Liberty costume, I tried using felt first, but felt really couldn’t have the flowy feeling of the dress, so I used stretchy cotton instead. I made the headdress and the torch with felt. I really like the way the torch came out.

The dress was made with stretchy cotton.

I stitched the side and the top to create the "gathered" look.

Crown

Crown

Wren in The Statue of Liberty costume

At this point, I still hadn’t figured out how to make them hold the sword from the knight costume and torch from the Statue of Liberty. If I used an elastic like for the shield, they wouldn’t hold the sword/torch correctly… So I decided to put a snap on the palm of their right hands, and on the sword and torch. The snaps are visible but I think it works out pretty well.

Oh snap!

Snap in use

The very last thing I did was to sew their noses and mouths on, and glued their pink cheeks on the face. I usually save the face for last because it’s always the hardest to get it right. The thread of each mouth is very slightly loose so you can make them smile or sad by moving the thread.

As you can see, I only made two pairs of shoes for four costumes. And if you’re a Costume Quest fan, you’re wondering where are roller shoes for the robot costume… Before PAX Prime, I made two pairs of shoes, which were just plain black. But after I came back from PAX, I wanted the costumes to be more accurate, so I remade them in two different colors with white soles and added white tips to make them look more like Converse shoes. And then I had to travel back and forth between New York and San Diego for my new job at The Behemoth. I took the unfinished Wren and Reynold with me every time I traveled, trying to finish them little by little. But my tools and fabrics were in two locations, and I just couldn’t finish the last couple of things. I finally finished all the costumes and details when I was in NYC. So my sewing machine was already packed and I couldn’t make a pair of the roller shoes. But I will make them once I’m done with all this moving stuff!

The edge around the white tips were all hand sewn.

Even though I struggled each step and it took a lot longer to finish, it really was so much fun to make and put costumes on and off on Wren and Reynold. I was never a playing-with-dolls kind of girl as a kid but I could totally get into this now.

Wren and Reynold

So where are the little guys now? They’re on their way to Tasha! It’s just a small token of my appreciation for making such a wonderful game. I’m sure she’ll give them plenty of candies to make them happy.

For more pictures of these plush, visit stuffed stuff: Costume Quest (Wren and Reynold) set!

I already tweeted/Google +’ed/Facebooked but I thought I’d give a proper greeting on my blog, so…

Happy New Year!!

I came back to NYC from San Diego early on December 21st, for ONE LAST TIME. During this trip, I have to pack EVERYTHING and leave for New York for real. After we spent our Christmas packing, we went up to Boston to see Derek’s sisters’ family.

His oldest sister has a 3 year old son and 5 month old daughter. And his older sister has 3 and 4 year old girls. They are all super ADORABLE. We couldn’t stay there for too long but they seemed to love our lego Christmas gifts. We got his older sister’s daughters “Creationary“ It’s like Pictionary with Legos. We had so much fun playing it that we’re getting it for ourselves when we move to SD. Seriously, the game isn’t just for kids, we were totally getting into it!

As we were leaving to catch a bus back to NYC, the 4 year old came running and gave us a drawing.

It's a Laputa robot!!

We watched some Laputa the night before and I had drawn a robot on some paper at her drawing table. And she was able to draw this from my drawing! We were so surprised how intricate her drawing was. We’re definitely going to frame this and display it in our new place.

Christine, my co-worker from the Behemoth, was staying at my place for her trip to NYC. We were busy packing so we couldn’t really take her out anywhere but we all went to our friends’ New Year’s Party on the 31st. And on the 1st we spend some peaceful time, packing.

Well, aside from packing, we’ve been also trying to eat out at our favorite places & new places in NYC before we leave. We aren’t stressed out about the move and we’re actually having a lot of fun. But we still can’t help being sad to think that it was our last Christmas, last New Year’s Eve and last New Year in NYC…

Okay, okay. I’m making it sound like we’ll never come back to NYC but we’re actually going to Boston in April to attend PAX East and I’m sure we’ll visit NYC afterwards, but it’s won’t be the same as as living here.

Anyway! 2011 was definitely an amazing year for me. I was given a dream job and a life-changing opportunity. I have no idea what will happen in San Diego in 2012, but I’m sure this year will be even more awesome than the last year.

I don’t know what my New Year’s resolution is though. I always fail to keep my New Year’s resolution and feel guilty about it, so I’m going to make it something like “doing a lot of stuff and have fun doing it.”

Yeah, that sounds good, right?

After I got my job at the Behemoth, I’ve been traveling back and forth between New York and San Diego. I have a fully functional kitchen at my temporary living space in San Diego but Derek (the person I cook cutesy food for) is in New York, and it just hasn’t been fun making character food for myself. :/

But! I came back to New York for the last time before our big move, and I finally had the time to make some cute food for the holidays!

Non-bento #44: Chocolate covered strawberry Totoro
Quick easy sweets turned out to be a time consuming nightmare… as usual. But I somehow managed to make some (with huge help from Derek) and here are some previews of the delicious victory.

Hopefully I can post more photos of the final food later.

Happy Holidays everyone!!

During the last day at PAX Prime back in August, I was asked to stop by at the Behemoth booth. So I went there while Derek was in the line for Uncharted 3.

I got to the booth, was called into the back room and got some big news. Words cannot describe how I felt when I heard it. But maybe Japanese emoticons can. Sorry if they don’t display properly on your computer.

They offered me a FULL TIME JOB as a PLUSH DESIGNER at their office in San Diego! The Behemoth, my most favorite game company in the world whom for years I’ve been making plushes for as a hobby for fun!

(￣Д￣；；< Whaaaaa?

I really thought they were joking at first. And then they told me that they were serious.

∑(〇Д◎ﾉ)ﾉ < Eeeeeeh?!

It felt like a dream because, well, it’s my dream job. Before I started jumping up and down with the joy, I wanted to tell Derek the news and hear what his opinion was, because we’d have to move to SD. So I didn’t give them my answer right then and there, but I’m sure I had a huge smile on my face.

ヾ(=^▽^=)ノ < I will get back to you! (but my answer will be YES)

I met up with Derek after he played the demo at Uncharted 3, but he had to deal with the airline companies to reschedule our flight, so I patiently waited about an hour until he finished. I couldn’t hope for a better reaction from him when I told him the news. He was ECSTATIC. And the whole thing slowly started to sink in.

♪♪＼(^ω^＼)( /^ω^)/♪♪ < w00t!

As soon as I got home to NY, I wrote an email officially accepting the offer before they could change their mind. And I danced a little.

┌|≧∇≦|┘♪♪└|≧∇≦|┐♪♪┌|≧∇≦|┘<omg omg omg omg omg

If you follow me on Twitter or Google+, you probably noticed that I was in San Diego for the past several days. I’m writing this from my temporary living space in San Diego. I came here and started to situate myself in the office and the area. I’ll still have to go back and forth between SD and NYC and deal with the whole move and stuff.

Even the windows are so behemothy.

So majestic

My first stay was less than a week, but it’s been SO AWESOME. Everyone in the office is SUPER NICE. (-waves- (´･ω･)ﾉｼ

This little guy is everywhere in the office.

I have a desk in the office with a super duper sewing machine on it. I’ve already started sewing stuff and I’m feeling very productive. I’ll still be making plush and food in my spare time. So don’t worry, I’ll keep on blogging!

Aaand I finally got them! They fit perfectly.

Just so you know, I’m not working on the games here, so don’t ask me game related questions because I won’t have answers for you.

I’m going back to NYC again, and hopefully I’ll blog more while I’m there!

tl;dr I’m going to be moving to San Diego to work for The Behemoth as a full time plush designer! w00t!

Final day of PAX Prime 2011!!

We’d been eating junky food for breakfast during PAX, so we decided to start the last day of our PAX with good hearty breakfast.

We wanted to go to the panels early in the morning, so we headed down to Lowell’s at Pike Place Market.

My crab omelette - It may look boring but it was filled with crabby flavor.

Derek's Market Breakfast

I don’t care that people say it’s a tourist pit. They open from 7:00AM and my overpriced crab omelet had tons of crab in it and it made me happy! I’ve been to Lowell’s in the past, and the servers were always nice too.

Good bye piggy, see you next year!

After we got back from the breakfast we checked out of our room, checked in our luggage at the hotel, and headed to the convention center.

I wanted to give Hot Dog Fairies to Mike and Jerry, so I got in the line for the signing while Derek went to the Tested.com panel. I guess I could’ve given them more Hot Dog Fairies to give to the other PA staff, but I wanted to see their reaction in person. Besides, I wanted to get my photos of the new Penny Arcade themed food signed.

When I took out the photos of Twisp and Catsby burgers and Twisp and Catsby Pizza, they remembered the last time I met them and gave them the plush of the monster from Lookouts. Cool, huh?

And I gave them Hot Dog Fairy plushes. A rare one and a regular one. They were pretty excited to see them.

Look how excited they are on the inside! (Seriously, they were. This was their "photo for a fan" face.)

There were a lot of people in the line for Mike and Jerry’s autograph so after I gave them Hot Dog Fairy Plushes, I quickly moved out of the line and headed to meet up with Derek.

When I met up with Derek, he told me that he got an email about the cancellation of our flight back to NYC due to Hurricane Irene. Despite the fact that we didn’t attend that many panels, we weren’t able to explore as much as we wanted in the first two days, and this was the last day of PAX, so we didn’t want to waste any time. So we decided to solve our problem about how to get home until AFTER PAX was over.

Metal robot animal thing with a hammer

Female Shepard from Mass Effect

We walked around the Exhibitor’s Hall a bit more and went to give a Hot Dog Fairy plush to Jeff Kalles of Penny Arcade outside the room where his panel was. He was very sweet and charming as always.

Zombies were asked not to dance.

Then we went to see Scott Kurtz and Kris Straub at Band Land where musical guests have their table to sell their merchandise. We wanted to buy the Blamimation DVD and also I wanted to give something I made for both of them.

Charming Scott Kurtz and SAW Babies sock/koozie

Handsome Kris Straub and SAW babies sock/koozie

This is our most favorite character, the sock puppet from the SAW Babies segment from Blamimation. The first version I made for Derek was not accurate, so I decided to improve it.

You can see a full post on this stuffed stuff: SAW Babies ver.2.

After that we went to the Uncharted 3 booth. They told us the wait would be 2 hours… but we got in the line anyway. I wasn’t going to play the demo so I went to the Behemoth booth again, and waited for Derek to finish.

In the line to play the Uncharted 3 demo

We finally decided to deal with our flight situation, which turned into a total nightmare… Priceline told us to call Delta, then Delta told us to call Continental, but Continental wasn’t taking calls because of heavy volume. It was so ridiculous that Derek did a comic about it too.

We wasted a precious last couple of hours of PAX because of this. Before we knew it, it was already time for us to go see the Omegathon final round.

The final round of The Omegathon was to play the Legend of Zelda (the original one) and the person who gets the first Triforce piece wins. The trick was to one person would read an walkthrough and other has to follow and play the game. That sounds like it’d be too normal and easy, right?

But one person just reading the text (and they weren’t supposed to point at the screen) to the other person who have probably forgotten how to avoid/beat certain enemies wasn’t as easy as it seemed.

It was exciting but it was probably the shortest Omegathon I’ve witnessed so far. I wish it were longer!

Omegathon winner falls to the ground from the joy.

We usually rush to the airport after the Omegathon final round/closing ceremony but our re-scheduled flight was at 1:00AM, so we walked around in the convention center until the last minute. We could’ve had nice dinner in Seattle, but we were so stressed out about the flight back to NYC, we just wanted to get to the airport and relax. So we headed to the airport, got there way early, and found out our flight at 1:00AM was delayed and the new schedule was 3:45AM… But we didn’t care. We made it to PAX, we had so much fun at PAX, and somehow we got to reschedule our flight so we didn’t have to stay in Seattle for extra nights!

We ate horrible airport food, took a nap by our gate, slept some more on the plane and safely arrived in NY. We were worried how bad the damage was in our neighborhood or to our apartment on the way back to our place.

But to our surprise, the weather was super nice in NY and there was almost no sign of a hurricane!

Once again, PAX didn’t disappoint us. It was another magical 3 days. Actually, PAX Prime 2011 was probably the MOST memorable PAX ever for me and Derek. Every PAX is amazing. Meeting with PAX staff, game developers, Enforcers, fellow gamers, etc… but this one was particularly special. I hope I can write something about it on my next post!

Derek took a lot of photos with his fancy camera during PAX Prime, so some photos belong to him.
Check out Derek’s PAX Prime 2011 set and My PAX Prime 2011 set for all PAX photos I used for my post!