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bento#43 Castle Crashers April 11, 2009

Posted by AnnaTheRed in bento blog (all), bento blog - video game.
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5 comments

I’ve worked on the sketch for this bento for about 2 weeks, but I just couldn’t draw it. I thought about not doing this and moving on, but I just hate giving up, and my boyfriend and I love this game so much. After failing to make it about twice, I made Totoro Parade bento to keep me motivated, and finally I made it.

Bento #43: Castle Crushers
Created and eaten on: 4/10/2009

Castle Crushers is a xbox 360 arcade game. It’s a button mashing action RPG game by the Behemoth. I usually get bored with a button mashing games, but this one is also an RPG, so it has a story and just like a normal RPG, you get experiment points, money, new items, etc… so it keeps you entertaining for a pretty long time.

As soon as I watched the game, it made me want to make the bento of it. There are so many cute characters in the game, and seemed so easy to draw, but the problem is the composition. I was going to reenact a scene from the game first, but this bento had to have at least 4 characters. If I made it a 2-D bento it would’ve been easier, but I wanted to make it 3-D. I drew a sketch, but the 4 main characters were so tiny… When I was looking at the wallpaper and art from the Behemoth site, I saw a bunch of characters’ heads in a line, comparing how big they were to each other. Then I had an idea of making just the heads. After looking at each character’s head, and thinking which food it could be, I picked 2 more characters on top of 4 main Knights.

Before I started making characters, I prepared the bento box as usual. I Put lettuce at the bottom, and put sauteed renkon (lotus root) over it.

First I made the Knights. I made three barrel shaped rice balls first. For the red one, I carefully peeled off the outside part of fake crab stick, and put it on seaweed and wrapped it around a rice ball. For the blue one… Well, I could’ve made an egg sheet with egg white, and dyed it blue with cabbage juice, but I didn’t want to use too much blue in my bento, so I just decided I’d substitute seaweed for the blue. So I cut seaweed, I wrapped it around a rice ball.

For the orange one, I mixed egg with ketchup and beat it, and made an egg sheet. (see “how to make an egg sheet”) I cut it to the size of the rice ball, and wrapped it with it. For the green one, I microwaved lettuce, and wrapped potato salad with it.

For the Barbarians, I cut Japanese style hamburg (see “how to make Japanese style hamburg”) I had made the night before into square, and put sliced konnyaku (yam cake) in boiled water and cooked it a couple of minutes (to remove the smell), took it out and cut it to make the face and horns on Barbarians, and put it on the hamburg.

For the Bear Sharman, I made a rice ball, made smaller rice balls for the ears.

After all the characters were put into the bento, I cut cheese for the white cross pattern for the Knight, and put it on them. I cut out circles of seaweed using a hole puncher for the Knights’ eyes, Bear Shaman and the holes on Barbarians’ face mask. I cut tiny pieces for the nose and mouth for Bear Shaman, and the lines on the mask for Barbarians. At this point, I noticed that the eyes were smaller than I wanted… I was so running out of the time, so I couldn’t make bigger eyes.

Originally, I wanted to make one Animal orb for each Knight. Animal orbs are like a pet which you can find in the game, and each animal has a different ability to help you through the game. But, I had so little time left… So I just made the chicken, which was used on the official site of  Behemoth. The chicken is made with carrot and left over egg sheet on a quail egg. (see “how to make chicken with an egg”) When I was making the chicken’s crown and tail with carrot, I made carrot flowers (see “how to make vegetable flower”).

Aside from the fact the Knights were thicker (wider) than they were supposed to be, I made a crucial mistake. I knew about it, but I was making a mad rush to finish it, I was probably delusional. I was going to use tomato skin to make the bloody paw print on Bear Sharman’s forehead. But for some reason, I used sliced cheese… I could’ve just used ketchup, but I remember ketchup easily seeps into rice so I used cheese instead. But I could’ve put ketchup on top of the cheese, but like said, I wasn’t thinking straight.

It seems like whenever I try to make bento of something I really really like, I always make a very small mistake that can make a big difference in the final bento. T_T I will definitely make Castle Crashers themed food again! But before that, my boyfriend and I should probably finish the game. 😛

Knights:
– Rice ball wrapped with fake crab meat on seaweed for red knight
– Rice ball wrapped with an egg sheet mixed with ketchup
– Rice ball wrapped with seaweed
– Potato salad wrapped with lettuce
– Seaweed on cheese for Knights’ face

Barbarian:
– Konnyaku (yam cake) on Japanese hamburg
– Seaweed for the mask

Bear Shaman:
– Seaweed and rice on rice ball

Chicken:
– carrot and egg sheet on quail egg

Other food:
– Lettuce
– Sauteed renkon (lotus root)

For more pictures of my bento, visit Bento! set and Bento details! set on my flickr page.

bento#40 Braid bento March 7, 2009

Posted by AnnaTheRed in bento blog (all), bento blog - video game.
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4 comments

There was another bento I’d been wanting to make for a long time, but I knew it would’ve been difficult, so I had been putting it off. I really had to get it out of my system, I just decided to go for it.

Bento #40: Braid bento
Created and eaten on: 3/6/2009

Braid was a puzzle game that came out on Xbox live arcade in 2008. It was created by an independent software developer Jonathan Blow. It was praised by so many game reviewers and had so much buzz even before the game was released, so of course, my boyfriend had to play it. The game itself, the story, the puzzle, the art, and the music, was made of pure brilliance. It was so new and nothing like any other games. You manipulate time to solve the puzzle, and in some stages, you can
fast forward, rewind, slow down time (and the background music) as you play. Like I said, this game is absolutely fascinating to play, but to listen and watch someone play is… excruciating. Imagine someone is playing a vinyl record, but it keeps skipping, changing the speed (rpm), or playing it backwards. Unfortunately, I had a slight headache when he was playing this game, and the color contrast of the game images and the screwy music made me nauseous. It was just a bad combination… (My boyfriend and friend told me that if you’re the one who’s playing, the music doesn’t bother you at all.)

Anyway, one day I was looking for a good recipe for lazy people, and found a delicious cauliflower recipe! And it reminded me of a character from Braid, and that’s how I originally decided to make it. I started drawing for this bento, but realized that the style was so unique that it was very hard to copy. There weren’t that many characters in the game, but I knew what I wanted to make. The main character Tim, sheep-looking things (a.k.a. goomba, because he acts just like a goomba from super mario bros.) and the bunnies. When I was cooking cauliflower, I realized that it wouldn’t be easy to use cauliflower to make goomba as I thought, so I decided to use potato salad instead.

I made small balls of potato salad and sprinkled panko (Japanese bread crumbs) and Parmesan cheese on top then baked them until the top was brown. After I put cauliflower in the oven, I boiled quail eggs and dyed them with red cabbage juice. (see “how to dye eggs naturally”) I also cut kamaboko (fish cake) for the bunny’s ears, legs and arms and dyed them together with quail eggs.

While the cauliflower was being baked, and eggs were being dyed, I mixed rice with ground up black sesame seed (see “how to dye rice naturally”) and put it in a bento box. I put soboro (see “how to make soboro”) on the bottom part of the bento box for ground. Then for the ladder I fried potato I had cut and kept in the water in a Tupperware container the night before.

After the cauliflower was done, I let it cool off for a while. Then for the goomba’s face cut cheese with a cookie cutter and seaweed for the nose and mouth. I cut kamaboko for eyes and teeth (for one of them) and put them on the cheese. After the cauliflower was completely cooled off, I put the cheese face on each baked potato salad ball.

I first put the fried potato ladder on the rice, and placed the goombas. Then I washed the quail eggs, cut slits for the bunny’s ears, put the ears on it and placed it in the bento. I put another quail egg for its body and put its legs on it. Then I cut kamaboko for its eyes, and seaweed for its nose.

At first, I wanted to make the Tim main character too. So I made his pants with konnyaku (yam cake), his shirt and jacket with seaweed and cheese, and his tie with fake crab meat. But I was running out of time, and after making the goombas and bunny, I really didn’t think that I could make him… so I gave it up! But since I had made his body, I thought it would’ve been a waste if I didn’t use it. So I just stuck in the corner of the bento box, as if he was jumping off of a goomba.

To finish off the bento, I put cooked broccoli on the ground. Then made a flower with broccoli and kamaboko and put it on the bunny’s back.

This was probably one of my most unsatisfying bento I’ve ever made. T_T It was just sooooo hard to make food look like the characters from the game, and many things about this bento were just so not accurate. I wanted the goomba in the middle to be crying! I wanted the bunny to be angry! And I wanted to make Tim! I finished this bento because I really wanted to get this out of my system, but I was very unhappy with this one, I asked my boyfriend not to show it around at the work like he usually does. (He sent people a link to the pictures though)

Jonathan Blow, if you happen to be reading this or come across my Braid bento somehow, I’d like to apologize. Your game is a truly unique and gorgeous puzzle game. One of the best I’ve ever seen, but my bento is not. I can’t wait for you to make a new game!

Even though my Braid bento was a failure, I recommend anyone who owns an Xbox 360 or PC to get this game. (Or at least play the free demo.) You can download this game onto your 360 for $15 now (1200 Microsoft points) and there is apparently a PC version of this game as well also for $15.

Goomba thing:
– baked potato salad with panko and Parmesan cheese
– cheese, kamaboko and seaweed for his face

Bunny:
– quail egg dyed with red cabbage
– kamaboko and seaweed for its eyes, legs and arms
– broccoli and kamaboko for the flower on its back

Tim:
– konnyaku for his pants
– seaweed on cheese for his jacket and shirt, fake crab meat for his tie
– fake sausage (fish cake0 for his hands and face)

Ladder:
– fried potato

Other food:
– rice mixed with black sesame seed and salt
– broccoli
– soboro

For more pictures of my bento, visit Bento! set and Bento details! set on my flickr page.

bento#37 Headcrabs from Half-Life February 21, 2009

Posted by AnnaTheRed in bento blog (all), bento blog - video game.
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7 comments

My boyfriend has been playing a lot of older games lately. He was telling me that there were some games he never actually finished, and wants to finish them before he bought any new games. One of the games happened to have cute fleshy bug looking creatures a.k.a headcrabs.

Bento #37: Headcrabs from Half-Life
Created and eaten on:2/3/2009

I actually never played Half-Life, but even if you’re a casual game player, you’ll probably know what the deal with crowbar and headcrab is.

The plot of Half-Life is pretty complicated to say the least. But if I were to describe the game, the game is Sci-Fi FPS (science fiction first-person shooter) game. You’ll have to kill fictional alien parasites, and the poor zombified people who have become a host of this alien. The headcrab looks very similar to a face hugger from Alien, and they move around on the ground jumping at you shrieking. You can acquire fancy guns in the game, but when you don’t have guns or out of ammo, you’ll have to use a crowbar. A lot of gamers found fighting aliens with a crowbar in a sci-fi setting pretty awesome, and the crowbar became somewhat of an iconic weapon amongst a lot of gamers, and there are a lot of “crowbar references” in many games. (You can actually finish the whole game just using crowbar as well.) When I was watching my boyfriend play Half-Life, they started to look rather cute than scary, so I decided to make a bento of them.

For the background, I sliced renkon (lotus root) and sauteed them and laid them on a bento box. I mixed rice with black sesame seed and salt (see “how to dye rice naturally”) and put it on the top of the renkon. To make the rice look like the ground in perspective (just like when you’re playing the game), I put broccoli along the sides of rice.

For the headcrabs, I cooked bacon, cut it into small bits, and mixed it with potato salad I had made the night before. I shaped it like the body of  the headcrab, and used a toothpick to make the mouth part. First I tried frying it, but the bacon inside the potato salad started to pop in the oil and it just fell a apart… So I placed them on baking sheet and baked them until they were brown. I think the headcrab came out great. The bacon bits in golden brown potato looks just like the headcrab yet delicious! While I was baking the headcrab, I cut potato into ” > ” shapes and fried them.

After I finished frying the fried potato legs, I placed the headcrabs on the rice, and stuck fried potato into the body. Then I cut kamaboko (fish cake) for its teeth and stuck it underneath the body.

Creepy or cute?

I placed fake crab meat on the rice and made the tip of the crowbar with boiled konnyaku (yam cake). The konnyaku wasn’t very stable, so I put konnyaku and fake crab meat together with raw pasta.

Get your crowbar ready!

I put the Half-Life logo I had cut out with seaweed the night before and put it on a slice of cheese and cut the cheese around the seaweed.

To finish it off, I put a little bit of the sauce for hamburg we had the night before on headcrab for blood, and it was done!

Then I realized that it looked a little too gloomy… I mean, the real game does look creepy and scary, but it’s a bento after all. So I sliced carrot, made little flowers, and put them on the bento. (see “how to make vegetable flowers”) I think it did brighten up the bento a little.
My boyfriend didn’t mind them though, he liked how realistic the headcrabs looked and they were quite delicious. 😀

Headcrab:
– potato salad with bacon
– fried potato for its legs
– kamaboko (fish cake) for its teeth
– hamburg sauce

Crowbar:
– fake crab meat
– konnyaku (yam cake)

Vegetable flowers:
– carrot

Other food:
– rice mixed with black sesame seed and salt
– renkon (lotus root)
– broccoli

For more pictures of my bento, visit Bento! set and Bento details! set on my flickr page.