 Aloha, good morning and we're back with Desi to the Rescue today, although we're going to talk about other people to the rescue, some of whom may be fictitious. This morning we have Sam Campbell's local creator, and actually this show will give about a little bit of a background. We're talking about comics and creations because of the content that's coming up this weekend, right? Right, we have amazing Hawaii Comic Con coming up this Friday and Saturday and Sunday. Saturday and Sunday, I thought. Saturday and Sunday. It's a two-day, right? Two-day. Okay, but why are these cons coming into Hawaii important for a local creator? Well, I think it's really cool that we have all these conventions come into Hawaii because it helps bring creative talent and media to Hawaii that normally you'd have to fly to the mainland to go to. What's really great about amazing Hawaii Comic Con is they're very community-oriented and they're really interested in showcasing the local creators, writers, illustrators, artists, publishers, that kind of thing. So it's really cool. Very cool. And so they're also bringing back some local talent as well that went to the mainland and I think Matt Nastos. Matt Nastos, yeah. Yeah. He was a Ratford, I think? Roosevelt. Roosevelt, graduate. So Matt Nastos does a lot of work for Disney. If you guys ever heard of this cartoon called Phineas and Ferb, he had a lot to do with that. He does stuff for Ninja Turtles. And I just found out he's a writer for Disney's Live in Matty. So if you guys see that, it's really cool show. Cool. Okay, so if people want to see, you know, come down to the amazing Hawaii Comic Con, they can just go to the website and get tickets? Go to the website www.AmazingHawaiiComicCon.com And kids 10 and under get in for free. We've got some information for the passes, but everything is on the website. So just go take a look over there. Jimmy J and Amazing Hawaii Comic Con, great people. There's a costume contest, cosplay contest. We're just a lot of really cool people are going to be there. Cool. And then that's the con that last year brought Stanley. Yes, brought Stanley. Yes, we were able to have Stanley Day in Hawaii. Okay. All right. Well, let's get to, let's talk about you and your creations. So what's the hardest thing about being a local creator? Oh, hardest thing about being a local creator, just in general, finding a job to do this kind of stuff here. That's next to impossible. But, you know, the good thing is we live in a time right now where we can go online and we have an international audience just like that. So basically, whereas before you'd have to leave Hawaii to go to the mainland to get a job or career, whatever, you can actually just do it from your house or your cell phone right now and everything's available. But it's just a mindset that a lot of people have to understand that we're not just, you know, landlock in Hawaii surrounded by the ocean anymore. We have a global audience and a lot of people don't know that. And that's kind of what I like to do at these conventions is to let people know. Why don't you tell me a little bit about these characters, like, for this guy in front of me? Well, Pineapple Man is a superhero. He was at one time Hawaii's own superhero. And I created him when I was 14 years old as a joke. And years later, as an adult, I was thinking about working for Marvel Comics and decided to... I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to move to New York because I love Hawaii. I like where I'm from and why do I have to leave here? So one of the guys had made a comment on, oh, this guy's a pineapple. Okay, we're going to do pineapple. And I met a bunch of local publishers. This guy, Richard Dominguez from Texas, he has this superhero called El Gato Negro. And so the guy, John Proudstar, who had a Native American superhero team called Tribal Force. So I talked to these guys and asked them why they did that. And they said, well, we wanted to make comics because when growing up, they didn't have anybody of their culture representing them. So I thought, well, these guys are doing it and they did such a good job doing it. Then maybe I should come home and do something like this. So when I came back here and I tried to figure out what to do and my wife was telling me, well, you need to dig up your old comic book, Pineapple Man, and do it. And I thought nobody would want to read something about this. And she's like, no, you should do it. And she convinced me to do it. And we came up with a better storyline to make it a little bit more mainstream. And I guess the rest is history. Cool. So you actually have comic books about Pineapple Man. Right. We did a print run in the mid to late 90s. And we only did like four large regular print books. And then I got really busy working for the University of Hawaii and working in Hollywood. And I wasn't able to continue the story. So here we are 20 years later and there's still a demand. And people still remember Pineapple Man and it just blows my mind. So I'm working on a graphic novel. It's a year behind schedule. I'm very sorry to everybody. Thank you for supporting us. It's coming. I promise it's coming. Just life gets in the way and it's on my brain every day when I wake up in the last thing when I go to sleep. But we are working on it and it's looking really good. I'm collaborating with a local digital artist named Nupua Ahina. And she's handling the colors and it makes it looking really good. So that should be out hopefully soon. Be a graphic novel. It'll be available online and at the local stores. And hopefully at the next whatever comic convention that we're at here in Hawaii. Cool. Very exciting. And I start to lean over the anxiety that comes with trying to create something and then all these deadlines. Deadlines. Yeah, life happens. Tell me about these other things in the middle. Well, we got here. So you're asking me about being a creative person in Hawaii. What's it take? You know, perseverance for one. I've been really lucky. I work for a company called Casey Hoy. And I get to design fun products and souvenirs and stuff like that. Casey Hoy has a huge product baseline. And I think we're like looking at over 7,000 different products. Wow. What I have here are examples of some of the recent things that we put out. I designed. We have these new custom surfboards that are made in America. We're famous for our dashboard dolls. So this is one of the designs of Hula Dancer. These are mini-tikis. Another designer, Manny. I can't remember his last name right now. Oh my God, he's going to kill me. That's okay. Well, this is what local creators do to pay the bills. And we have local creators creating local items. Manny Salvador. That's his name. Manny Salvador. He's a great designer. The guy, everything he does, it's amazing what he creates. And these are just some of the items that he's done. And I really like these characters. So we have the great opportunity to create fun things, momentum. They're not just, I mean, we're able to pay our bills and stuff for it. But what's great is somebody can take this home and they're going to remember, you know, their time that they spent in Hawaii. Or they can bring a gift back to their family and friends. Or if they have this on their car or on their dashboard as they drive. Like a poor Uber driver. Yes, like the poor Uber driver. That wasn't one of ours though. But yeah, like the Uber driver. But you know, hopefully somebody's driving somewhere in Minnesota for a reason they're coldly off. And they look at this thing and they go, oh, I remember. This poor viral video about this poor Uber driver harassing this hula dog. Which was beloved to so many people. Exactly. Yeah. So it is a business, but we get the opportunity to help share Hawaii and create memories that last a lifetime, hopefully. But since you're asking about products, this is a new product that we got out. It's a hand sanitizer. We have a whole line of them. Those are big now. These are really big now. Very important. Now, there's something that's really popular on the web right now. And you guys are familiar with this term. I have a pen, you know, and I have a pineapple. Bam. Pineapple pen. So we made this not knowing that this was going to be a trend. What? Yeah. So if you guys are interested in having a pineapple pen, go to CaseyHawaii.com designed by yours truly. Designed in Hawaii. Pineapple pen. Right. What local creators create. Exactly. To pay the bill. I had no, I had no plot in plan. But it would have been nice if we'd like a pineapple head pen, but maybe later. Okay. Well, I think do we have to go to break yet? Yeah. Let's go to break. And then we will be back with safety to the rescue in a few. My name is Ray Tsuchiyama. And I'm from Kalihi Palama. Spent 20 years in Tokyo, Japan came back after the great earthquake. I watch Think Tech all the time and hope everybody follows it on the internet because it is a program that is devoted to the future of Hawaii and brings all concerned citizens together to create a better society for all. Hello, my name is Crystal. Let me tell you my talk show. I'm all about health. It's healthy to talk about sex. It's healthy to talk about things that people don't talk about. It's healthy to discuss things that you think are unhealthy because you need to talk about it. So I welcome you to watch Quok Talk and engage in some provocative discussions on things that do relate to healthy issues and have a well balanced attitude in life. Join me. Aloha. Good morning. We're back with safety to the rescue. Although we're talking about other rescuers. I'm here today with Sam Campbell, local creator. And we're talking about the con that's coming up. And why are these cons important to the greater community? And what kind of good things happen? Good things happen. Well, what she's talking about is amazing Hawaii comic con. That's a Saturday, October 8th and 9th. What's good about it? What happened at the last con? That was a super touching story. Super touching story. Oh, okay. So I have a hui. I have two huis that I got. One is called the Hawaii comic book alliance. And basically we have a bunch of artists from across the state. And some Hawaii residents are out of the state that are publishing. And basically I put together this group featuring the Christopher Cavallos, the Amakua. Local heroes. Local superheroes. Local creators. And we just have like a lot of books, you know, Pepe and Exilion and a lot of really cool stuff. And basically I put together a hui where we can support each other because around the time when I was doing my comics, there was no information. There was nothing. And I just wanted to share my experience with these local creators. And also while I was making a comic book alliance, I also made a hero alliance. And what you're talking about is a guy put a call out called Heroes for Nainua. And he was looking at getting cosplayers because his son had some really hardcore cancer going on. The kid was like four years old. And he wanted heroes. So I have a group called the Hawaii Heroes Alliance. And I basically formed that so we can attend events, charity events for like, you know, children, veterans. The mission is to basically spread goodwill and aloha. And this was one of the times that we got to do that. And we went down there to their house and we got to spend some time with him and the family. And it was pretty good. And last I heard Nainua is doing pretty well. So yeah, good. Yeah, very touching. There was a little boy who I guess his auntie brought him to the car or something like that. But she was uplifted by just being around all these creative people dressed up having fun. Right. And that's one thing that I think is very important that, you know, you need to have fun in life otherwise. Life is too short. Right. Life is definitely too short. We need to have fun. These events coming to Hawaii, they help showcase that. They help bring these things that we love and we grew up and we admire it too. And a lot of people, you know, they think in life, well, I should do that, but there's an excuse. There's an excuse. Doubt is what kills a lot of people. Doubt is what stops you from doing this. Yeah, and there's reasons for it, but I can't tell you, from a personal point of view, it's really important to do these things. They're not easy. They're brutal. And they kick my butt all the time. But what blows me away is I have things like this helmet right here that a former student of mine went and made on his own. I got the other artists in the Alliance that they're because they're familiar with my work and they know my ethics and they give me fan art. And that blows me away. Just the fact that just doing something to take care of myself is able to help, I don't know, people feel better or good about themselves. Hey, it's Stacy. And we need to share these things. So what we're looking at right now is Dragonfly, which is something that I returned to Hawaii to do. And when I worked in Hollywood for a while and I made a really good living at it, but it wasn't home. So when I decided to come back home, the question was, what are you going to do with your life? What are you going to do now? And somehow I was working with Jam Productions and we're doing the Kikaita events and just looking at people excited and happy. I thought, well, we should do something like that. And I put together a production package, a bunch of casts. We designed some things. We worked with a local company called Rapid Technology. And we were the first people to put together 3D prototype costumes for a production ever that actually made it out there. And my goal was to pull the talent from Hawaii, the local people, the actors, the designers, the camera people, and put together a production because Steven Spielberg had said once when they came over here to shoot the Indiana Jones movie that the costs were really prohibitive because they have to bring all these people in. And there's no sustainable industry here at that time. Around the time we moved back, ABC started a production called Lost. And you guys know that's going in Hawaii 5-0. And what I like about them is they're bringing in a lot of mainland actors, but they also pull from the local talent pool as well. And they showcase Hawaii in a mainstream thing, which is what we're trying to do with Dragonfly. And Dragonfly was based on the Tokusatsu Japanese superhero shows, but everything was shot in Hawaii, made in Hawaii, and about people in Hawaii. And what I like about it is what pisses Hollywood off, I hate to say this, but that people in Hawaii actually aren't half-naked savages running around barefoot. It kind of freaked them out to give them a presentation of local people, a non-typical leading person as a lead role. And we had a very talented guy from Hawaii named Ko Haribe, who is clearly Asian, but born in Hawaii, and he kind of represents the local culture. Everybody in the cast represents, to me, what a good majority of Hawaii's people are like. What we have right now is you're looking at some of the footage that we put together for our demo reel for Dragonfly. So these conventions that come to Hawaii, they're really great because we're able to showcase local things or give, you know, they're looking at, especially amazing Hawaii Comic Con, they're looking to connect with the community. They want to make something that's fun that people look forward to and come every year. And one of the things that they are doing is they support the creative people, like the amazing Comic Book Alliance, but they're also giving me a platform here where I can share this experience of trying to create a series in Hawaii and show the rough cut episodes that we put together. Now, to give everybody heads up, what we are going to show is not very polished, but the messages I want to give to people in Hawaii is, yeah, you can do this. You can create something. You have an idea that you want to do? Get together. The best advice I ever got was from Tom Cruise, and what he told me was be where you love to be, surround yourself with people that you love and admire. And that's what I did when I put together this deal for Dragonfly. And we did it with basically hardly any money, and we shopped it around, and like I said, what I'm going to show at Amazing this weekend is not the most polished thing, but I really want people to come away with it going, well, I can do something, or I can do better than that. Whatever it is, I really need to stress upon people that like Ceci said earlier, life is too short, let's be happy. So do something that you love to do, and thanks to Amazing, that's what we're going to do. Share the stories that you think are important, and I know both of us feel that way about Hawaii. Hawaii's got a lot of talent. I know people are probably interested in what you said about Tom Cruise. Maybe you can share with them a little bit about your background. Okay, call my books. Let me into storyboard art. I used to train with this guy, Jason Scott Lee. You guys have heard of him? Jason had a movie he was working on with Kurt Russell, and they wanted to change the fights. And part of the way in Hollywood with the politics, there's a hierarchy. And if you have an idea that you want to change, you have to show what you can do better. So they tasked me with the job of helping them choreograph better fight scenes and drawing the storyboards for them. And I had like maybe 18 hours to do it before they flew to the mainland. And anyways, long story short, they loved it, it got accepted, and it opened the door for me to do other storyboard stuff. And because of my background with design work and martial arts, I was able to do more fights for movies. And what's cool is if they wanted me, they would just hire me from Hawaii and they would fly me up there, because it's like a six-hour commute. So I was able to do that, and eventually I moved up there. And one of the experiences was I ended up working on this movie called Collateral with Tom Cruise, and I actually had a chance to sit and talk to him one day where we were filming this nightclub scene. And we talked about Hawaii and Japan and martial arts, and he asked me in LA, and one of the things he told me was that piece of advice. Because if you're lucky, you make it. If you're not, at least you're trying to do something. I think that's very good advice. No matter what you're trying to do. Cool. Anything else we should talk about? We should talk about Stacy's project. Oh, God, no. No? Let's talk about the 442. Well... Stacy is in the Hawaii Combook Alliance, by the way. She also has a book. Stacy, what is your book called? Oh, God. It's called Journey of Heroes. It's about the 100th Battalion 442nd Regimental Combat Team. It's a historically accurate comic book, which is where we're shooting a film. But it's done...it's a historically accurate comic book, but it's not done in your typical style. Right. It's chibi style. But they're all real people, you know, and so I wanted people to... We don't have any B-roll for that. So look at it. Look at Stacy. But anyway, as an example, yes, I mean, Hawaii has so many important stories that we need to share. And actually, maybe you can talk about that helmet that's sitting next to you. And, you know, like, where do we get our inspiration? So this helmet here is from a production that Stacy helped me produce. We're just kind of testing out the market to see what it is. While I was doing Dragonfly, the project has come up several times and we've tapped around, and we've always been this close to getting it picked up. And something usually happens. It prevents it or slows it down. This is what Hollywood does. So we did a lot of work, and that is just still in limbo, I guess. In the meantime, I have a hard time sitting still. You guys can probably tell because my hands are moving a lot. And with these new conventions coming to town, not having a new comic book, I started making these things for fun just to kind of keep me a little sane. Growing up in Hawaii, thanks to Jan Productions, they brought Kikai-da, Kamen Rider V3, Goranjas, that kind of stuff. Even though a lot of people in Hawaii aren't Japanese, we had the benefit of Japanese pop culture because of this company. And we grew up with these heroes, and we made them our own. So this helmet that we got here just kind of came about because I wanted to make something. And I wasn't doing the 3D printing at the time, so I wanted to see what I was going to come with. It was basically made out of recycled items. These are old TV antennas. This is a kid's bug mask. The mouth is made out of foam. I don't know. I can't list out and give you a shot of it, but trust me, on the inside, it has door of the Explorer. The helmet I found on the side of the road, so more like a helmet. So we did, for fun, we did a photo shoot of these things and the actors and stuff that I got involved had such a good time to go, well, we should do something with this. So working with Stacey, working on the lines of, let's do something fun, let's make life fun, let's do something creative, and get together with a bunch of cool people and have a good time. Cole was home for Christmas. Cole Mariebe, Hawaii's own Bruce Lee, and Ninja, if you guys watch, so you think you can dance, was home in time for Christmas. So we incorporated the main character from the Dragonfly series, and we put it together with these characters. So on the fly, I had to come up with a story. Now, the reason why it's designed is because it's a common writer. And my backstory is this is a bio weapons filter mask designed by scientists who grew up loving these things, and it's just a little inside joke for him because creative people are crazy. And so... Here, here. The story is about Hawaii. Again, everything is set in Hawaii, it's about people from Hawaii, and it's set in Hawaii after a chemical, biochemical warfare thing goes wrong. And here it is because Hawaii has so many different races, and we have so many different climates, and we're on islands surrounded by the largest body of water. If they were to test something on us, it's easy to contain, and that's exactly what happened. So Kamen Kazi is about the survivors of the infected or kind of zombie apocalypse thing. I want to make something based on common writer, the road warrior, and the walking dead. We're probably going to show a clip of that at the amazing Hawaii Comic Con this weekend. Cool. But again, this is all made out of rubbish, unlike the dragonfly stuff. Well, not rubbish. Some of the things are actually rubbish. Like I said, I found this on the side of the road. That's true, right. So what you can do if you're creative, you work with what you got and can make really cool stuff. Keeps you out of trouble. So again, I guess that's you and the... Hawaii Comic Alliance. That's you. Yes, sort of. At the amazing Hawaii Comic Con this weekend, October 8th and 9th. Cool. At the Hawaii Convention Center. Yeah. It's important to support. Oh, do we have to buy tickets? Yes, get the ticket information right here. AmazingHawaiiComicCon.com We can pass with our $40. Saturday only passes $30. And there are also VIP tickets where you can meet or get special payings. But it's kids' day, right? Kids' day on... Kids' 10 and under free with paid adult. That's important, you know. Gotta keep the cakey engaged. And since it's so close to Halloween, you guys can all dress up and nobody's going to look at you weird. Why are you in the convention? Outside, I can't guarantee it, but... Why are you inside? No problem. It's always fun around the con area, right? Right. That's the wrap for Stacey To The Rescue this week. And other people to the rescue. Again, thanks so much, Sam Campos, for coming down and sharing a little bit about your creations and what it takes to be a creator in Hawaii and what you have to do to pay the bills. Yeah, pay the bills, remember. But also stay motivated and stay creative. Yeah. Casey Hoy. Alright.