But the other day Falanruw — now 28 — stood in his suite of offices overlooking Ala Moana Center with a cell phone on his hip as he watched a digitized version of himself. His company created the image to appear on a $10,000, 50-inch plasma screen that will soon live in the lobby of Pioneer Plaza, where it will serve as an interactive guide to the building.

In just three years, Falanruw's Digital Mediums software and Web site development company has gone from a one-man start-up generating $70,000 in sales to more than $1 million projected this year.

Falanruw has been hired by dozens of clients, including the City and County of Honolulu, Hawai'i Convention Center, Pacific Basin Development Council and the Palau Visitor Authority. And he's getting ready to move his 10 employees into bigger headquarters downtown.

But what's probably more impressive is the journey of a young boy who grew up learning to build thatched roofs and study the ways of the ocean and fish to help the survival of his village of Rull.

Falanruw certainly had a better start than most of the other children in the village. His father, Sam Falanruw, was chief justice of Yap's Supreme Court and became director of telecommunications for the telephone and Internet company that serves Micronesia.

Lubuw's mother, Margie, runs the Yap Institute of Natural Science, which is dedicated to the nonprofit studies of natural resource conservation.

But Falanruw was more interested in carving and drawing scenes of island life than pursuing any kind of career. His exposure to the outside world came largely from the Bruce Lee films that flickered on the movie projector his father owned, or on the canned sports and news highlights that were periodically shipped to the village.

"Growing up in Yap, there were definitely no computers around me," Falanruw said. "Honestly, if I hadn't left Yap, I can't even imagine what my future would have been."

His family sent him to Guam at the age of 15 to attend high school. There, he saw — but didn't get to touch — his first computer, an IBM that used DOS applications.

In 1993, he graduated high school to attend the University of Hawai'i-Hilo where he took a computer class that served as an undergraduate requirement. Falanruw didn't even know how to type and didn't particularly take to computers.

But the Internet fascinated him. And he turned his art skills into graphic designs, which led to digital layouts and eventually digital video. At UH-Manoa, Falanruw earned degrees in multimedia communications and computer science on his way to becoming certified as a Microsoft, Pinnacle and Avid Softimage Software engineer.

He worked for other companies and saved $30,000 that he put down 3› years ago on computers, equipment and office space to form Digital Mediums.

"I didn't know that I was onto something," Falanruw said. "I just knew I loved it and that was enough for me to take the risk."

Falanruw soaked up everything he could about running a business. He chased down every referral anyone made and read "Sales and Marketing For Dummies."

Falanruw's first job on his own was to design an interactive promotional CD for Title Guaranty. He then spent $3,000 for a booth at a technology show at the Neal Blaisdell Center, where Falanruw unveiled a plasma screen of a Yap village. Below the water, tropical fish swam around a reef and a shipwreck.

But the image wasn't a predetermined sequence of movements. People who touched the screen drew the attention of the fish, which followed the movement of the fingers.

"It was artificial intelligence," Falanruw said. "We wanted to show off our skills."

A customized and modernized version of the idea can now be found at the system Digital Mediums designed last year for Hanauma Bay's educational center.

Digital Mediums last year also designed a software system that connects 42 Hawai'i attractions to companies that book reservations for tourists. Its work designing a 3-D, interactive Web site for the Toyota Matrix for the Toyota Dealers of Hawaii recently won a 2003 Pele Award.

In May, Digital Mediums launched the first phase of a new Web site for the Hawai'i Convention Center. Eventually the Web site will offer convention planners 3-D views of the convention's areas to let them plan their events. People looking to buy tickets at the Blaisdell also can visit the Web site that Digital Mediums designed to check out the view from various seating sections.

Falanruw's dedication appealed to the people at Leadership Works, a leadership training academy that aims to blend Eastern, Western and Polynesian values.

He first enrolled in the five-month course and learned Leadership Works' philosophy before attempting to upgrade the company's brochures, stationary and Web site.

Digital Mediums eventually came up with a look that chief operations officer Celine Nelsen describes as a "contemporary wave that's an East-West blend and has holistic energy."

The design also includes the idea of a canoe paddle, which Leadership Works president Glenn Furuya talks about in his courses as a metaphor for any organization trying to move forward.

The new logo, Nelsen said, "shows that everything needs to flow, to come full circle, which is what leadership is all about."

Digital Mediums is now upgrading Leadership Works' Web site. It will be more streamlined, better looking and offer such things as surveys to allow participants to measure their progress as leaders, Nelsen said.

"They did such a fantastic job," Nelsen said. "They took Glenn's course and just captured everything."

Falanruw's work with Digital Mediums won him the Honolulu Small Business Administration's Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for 2003. But Falanruw is the kind of businessman who keeps a handmade, wooden spear gun in the corner of his office.

And the values he learned while wearing a traditional thuw garment are never far away.

"When I left Yap, I got exposed to the other culture and the drive to be successful," Falanruw said. "It was very different from the values of fishing and providing community service for the village. But that gave me balance. And in this world, you need balance to survive."