INhonolulu 3.0

We just switched our lifestyle and entertainment website INhonolulu​ over to a new platform (again!). The new platform gives us a new, slimmed down, simpler look, and does a lot of great things for us structurally as well. At the same time, it does sacrifice some of the "flair" of our elaborate Wordpress template.

Sweet Jesus Christ though, I'm so happy not to be using Wordpress anymore. It's like suddenly having a bed that isn't infested by bedbugs after having slept in one for roughly a year-and-a-half. Maybe that's an exaggeration but, if so, it is a slighter exaggeration than you might think. Which reminds me: I need a new bed.

We're going bat-shit overdrive on Pow! Wow! 2015 coverage and I'm personally playing both Deltron albums back-to-back on repeat getting ready for next Tuesday's performance at The Republik. The image above is of local musician Mike Lundy's "Tropical Lightning," the debut press from Roger Bong's new Aloha Got Soul record label. It's rare groove goodness.

"Bottom line is, just keep trying things 'till you find the way that works." - some asshole

Working with a new WACOM Cintiq 24"

Shots of me working on an album artwork project with my new WACOM Cintiq 24" - prior to getting this technological beast, I was using an old, but trusty, WACOM that had no screen. It's live-drawing area was a gray square, forcing me to look at my monitor to see what I was drawing, rather than be able to focus on my hands.

This made line-work in particular take much longer than it needed too (constantly having to redraw lines that didn't quite come out right, and then shave those lines down with the eraser tool after). It also made working on art projects much more frustrating than need be (9 of 10 doctors recommend their artists use Cintiqs).

Speaking of doctors, using the old WACOM, which could only be laid flat on a desk that is, really, at a terrible height for my own ease of use and comfort, was giving me some serious Carpal tunnel syndrome in my right wrist (a combination of the height and angle of my arm and the extreme pressure I was exerting to keep those lines on target without being able to see what I was really doing). The new Cintiq, as you can see, is mounted on a stand that allows one to rotate the Cintiq to a comfortable angle. Placed on a new desk, it actually allows me to stand while I draw, which is also a relief for my back.

“A man of purpose is a man on an assignment.”

Kensuke Ishida #3

Kensuke Ishida is the main character in the manga First Born, which is currently in the early production stage for the first "season." Still working on his final appearance.

DMC Hawaii Thumbnail

I'm writing an article for the Honolulu Weekly this time, but somehow I managed to get art involved too.
The story is about Disproportionate Minority Contact in Hawaii's Juvenile Justice System - Native Hawaiians account for 40% of youth involved in the JJS here.
UH Manoa's Dept. of Urban and Regional Planning helped put out a report with suggestions on how to fix this and I put together an article explaining all that.
This image is a thumbnail I did for an image I think I'll use to accompany this article. The editor of the Weekly asked for an image of troubled youth, and since the story is abstract, and not about any one youth in particular, I decided to obscure the face with heavy shadows that should hopefully also add a lot of mood and emotion.
However, it is still a news story, so we don't want the image to color the story too much, since it is fabricated (the image, not the story). We'll have to see what happens. I may have to revise before I can start painting for real.

The Four Elements

Part of my "real, live superheroes" project, this image was created by taking a photo of four friends posed as superheroes representing The Four Elements.
At the Ka Leo Arts Festival, my booth was a "get yourself drawn as a super hero or villain" booth. Thanks in large part to my marketing champion Reece Farinas, I made a lot of money and made a lot of people happy at the same time! Most of the customers took their pencil drawings home with them, but these guys asked me to keep theirs and turn it into a full blown, colored comic cover. So here it is! Hope you like it.

To the left is the original pencil drawing I did at the fair.

As always, right click on an image to open it in a new tab and view it full sized.

Disney buys Lucasfilm, Death Scars ensue

My cohorts; Josh Harmon and Vince Fitzgerald, and I had already created a timeless Star Wars comic with an excellent joke about Darth Vader's alleged skills with handling children and teenagers with patience and safety. Well, when we heard Disney had bought out Lucasfilm with intent to release an Episode 7 in 2015, we realized that our timeless joke, with a minor tweak, could also become a current event commentary with timely implications. Before I explain what is posted below, let me first clarify this project the three of us are working on. All three of us pitch ideas for comics and the ones we like get put above the ones we think suck. Josh and Vince are the refinement process where those good ideas are transformed into workable comic strips, with some help from me. Then, I start drawing, making sure to send them updates as I do this, so that if anything is wrong, we can catch it early on and not after I've slaved for hours on it. Then, we might make some tweaks in the dialog to better match the facial expressions that came out of my artwork, or throw in a Disney reference in the punchline at the last second to gain relevance. Then it's pretty much done.

Vince is also in charge of making us a website for these comics to live in. The site is moving along, but not faster than say, a Honolulu City maintenance project, and we're still talking about what our comic should be called. I personally am all for "Rocky Dennis Memorial Inner Beauty Pageant Comics" (or RDMIBPC, for short), but we also have several other possibilities like "Angry Itch Comics," "Three Amigos Comics," "Fancy Gentlemen's Tea Party Comics" etc.

For now, since website and name are still nebulous at best, I'm going to post the comics we make here for now, so they don't lose their timelessness, and once the site is up, we'll just stick the comics we finished before the site was ready into the site archives as though they were there all along haha.

So, without further ado, presented here is the first comic collaboration between the illustrious Josh Harmon, the Grand Goof Vince Fitzgerald, and myself, the humble clown with a stylus and a tablet, Will Caron: "Death Scars."  Featured first is the original, timeless version, and after that will be the version with the Lucasfilm referenced punchline. Enjoy.

And here is the Lucasfilm joke version:

Working Title: Death Scars

Starting a new project is always difficult, especially when you're working with talent that's 3,000 miles away from you and your best source of interaction is Skype and GoogleDocs. Fortunately, there is talent. I'm working with my two good friends from college, Josh and Vince, to create a new web comic. We haven't settled on a name for this project, or on anything really, but we have a few good ideas and hand that can wield a stylus on a Wacom, so what the hell. I really hope this takes off. 

The first idea we're hashing out is a comic about Darth Vader and his skill with children. After an initial study and layout,the first panel came out like this (left). Fortunately, practice seems to make me better (who knew?) and after some practice and a painting of TOKiMONSTA, I can now say that the artwork for the strip is complete (I hope). Here it is, in glorious ExtraColor:

Will's TwentyWhat? Artwork in an iPad Magazine

Well it's official; TwentyWhat Magazine knows its design. Sleek, streamlined, sexy. Simple.
This iPad and PDF magazine is "a young woman's guide to defining her decade," according to its Facebook page.
And the coolest part in my opinion is that the whole thing was created in the graduate Spring 2012 magazine management course for the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. Entirely student created , student run and student driven. Impressive.
About a month ago or so my friend Gerilyn, who graduated from High School with me, asked me if I could provide some illustrations for a couple stories she and the rest of the staff of TwentyWhat were preparing for their September issue (bravo on being a month-and-a-half early on deadline) - the original artwork was already posted after I completed it.
Here we have a few samples of the actual page design for their upcoming issue that incorporate my artwork.
The first is a compare and contrast piece on Obama and Romney as young men: who their first loves were, where they lived in college, where they traveled in their twenties.
The second is an advice piece on how to successfully network in this tech-savvy and fast-paced age. Tips include, using twitter and not wearing distracting name-brand items to interviews.
Although the magazine is geared toward young women, I think that some of it can certainly apply to men as well, and besides - it just looks so good!


If you have an iPad, I recommend getting a copy of their September issue once it hits the "stands."
Their first (I believe) issue came out in May of this year and can be viewed online at issuu.com/twentywhatmagazine/ docs/may2012.
Give them a "like" on Facebook and read through some of their articles. The design is great, the message clear:
"When life hands you lemons, start a lemonade franchise and retire young."
Keep up the great work TwentyWhat.

As always, right click on an image to view it individually and increase it's viewing size.

The Making of the Nightlife Guide: a Ka Leo behind the scenes

Brian Tseng / Ka Leo O Hawaii

The cover photo we used for Ka Leo's Nightlife Guide, November 18, 2011.

Ever wanted to see how we make the newspaper? Here's your chance. The talented cinematographer Shinichi Toyama follows the Ka Leo crew around as it prepares the Nightlife Guide. From planning and conceptualizing, to interviewing, photo shoots, designing and putting the pages together and all the way until the finished product comes out. Check it out.