San Gabriel Valley Comic Book Festival

We had an awesome time at SGVCBF (Although the name is super long). This was our first time showing our work in public, outside a digital realm. The reaction was very positive for the small amount of stuff we had, just some postcards, stickers and printed artwork. Everybody was super supportive and friendly, they made us feel very welcomed.

A special thanks to Grasiela Rodriguez who organized the entire event and with whom we were lucky enough to share a table with. She was promoting her first comic "Lunatic Fringe". It was nice being next to someone who is just starting out like us.

We saw a lot of familiar faces including my recent DIY comic instructor Javier Hernandez creator of El Muerto. He had some awesome sketch dolls of his character and others. I was lucky enough to pick up one of the first at geek con. I am looking forward to hearing his latest Podcast "Javiland"!

I was able to talk to Sherm Cohen a character designer I only recently discovered and now greatly admire. He showed me his sketch book that was filled with the most beautiful character drawings. I also hit up Jim Lujan and talked to him about Ghettomation. I scored an awesome freekdaddy poster, which is one of my favorite animations by Jim. There were so many others, some I met before, others I met for the first time. It's really great being in a community of like minded creatives.

Art Lopez finished off the event with a great live painting of his sculpture.

I can't wait for next year. It was a good start for us. Now it's time to get ready for the Long Beach Comic Con!

Comic Book Festival

Next Sunday September 19th we will be at the San Gabriel Valley Comic Book Festival. This is a free event for the whole family to enjoy. Neil and Ray will be there to talk about forever freshman and dance like monkeys for spare change. We hope to see you there!

Check this link for more info
http://www.sgvcomicbookfestival.com/

DIY Comic Workshop

Geeks comics held a DIY Comic Workshop with Javier Hernandez creator of El Muerto. I had a great time talking to fellow artists woking on their first comic book. Javier went over the process of creating, promoting and selling a self published comic. We all shared our individual projects and exchanged networking info. It was a very eclectic group with everyone taking a unique approach to creating their comic. Javier only got a few words in before we bombarded him with questions. I guess being super excited and new to the whole process we got impatient, but it lead to some good conversation and understanding of all the hard work that is involved with creating your own comic. Luckily he made a handbook with all the info in it so we can always go back and read that. Over all I was very happy with the workshop and enjoyed sharing my enthusiasm with my peers and mentor. I highly recommend attending one of Javier's workshops.

Freshman Muppets

A tribute to those wacky muppets.

I'm still working out the whole Forever Freshman concept and really starting to think about where I want to take it, and the best way to go about it. This is still very new and I'll be working out the kinks for a while. Now that we have a rough website I'm thinking about going the web comic route for now. We'll be improving the site and making it the command center. I've been listening to other artists and their ideas about marketing, so the wheels are turning. My goal is to build a following and find our audience. I want to start doing a consistent bi-weekly web comic. We're are still planning on doing a print comic, but it may take a little longer then expected. If you are following this it all begins here. Who knows where it will end up.

Thanks

-Neil

FOREVER FICTION

Did a sketch during lunch of Ray and I in a Pulp Fiction Posse. Thought I'd make a little poster out of it.

BAND GEEKS!

Awww band, so many memories. Let's get this party started!

Quick sketch of Ramone

What is Forever Freshman? / New Logo

Forever freshman is a celebration of the underdogs, freaks, geeks, nerds, misfits and outcasts. Which is pretty much everybody! We've all been in awkward situations, picked on, rejected or humiliated (or all of the above). These experiences help define who we are and shape our lives. For every new situation, challenge and endeavor we become freshman all over again. Figuring things out and making mistakes along the way, but hopefully learning and becoming better people.

That's all nice and good, but I still don't know what the hell it is!?!?

We are telling our story through a comic book/comic strips roughly based on the lives of an adolescent Neil Segura and Ray Mendivil. It takes place in a working class suburb of LA in which we grew up and includes many equally peculiar friends. The comic strips will be posted online at www.foreverfreshman.com (Coming Soon) and we will be printing out a full length comic book as well. Aside from the comics we plan on creating other outlets such as, music, stickers, shirts, art, podcasts and animation just to name a few. All based on the characters from Forever Freshman. Our hope is to create a brand for everyone and anyone brave enough to embrace a grassroots/do it yourself culture. It's about choosing your own path and being an individual.

So, I spent all weekend drawing and designing this logo. One of the biggest challenges was designing the text in an unfamiliar style. I wanted it to be kinda graffitish, fun, cartoony look. I wasn't getting what I wanted using any type font so I decided to draw it out myself, which wasn't the easiest thing for me to do but after many failures I got something I was happy with. I decided to add some other design elements to better communicate what Forever Freshman is all about, but tried to keep the title treatment as the main focus. The other stuff is more for embelishment, but still designed to compliment the logo.

Green Eggs & Spam

Comic Strip #1

Block Printing

So I bought a block printing starter kit and spent the weekend carving and printing. It was pretty great! I haven't made a block print since high school, so it took a little time getting into the groove. I used a very soft material which was extremely easy to cut and made two prints of characters from my comic. Until now I have only had sketches and computer renderings so to have some tangible artwork feels good. My hope is to make a series of these prints to coincide with the comic. Since they are small and easy to reproduce I'm gonna try to sell them for relatively cheap, but for this first round I'll most likely give away for promotion. If you are interested in these let me know.

P.S. I have to give thanks to my wonderful wife who took pictures of the process for all to enjoy.

JUDO CHOP!!

Ray and I have had our share of mental and physical abuse from friends who happened to be girls. From Ray getting his glasses broken to me being judo chopped in the middle of my Junior english class. We have endured. I wish I could say these acts of violence were out of affection, but it was more that we were huge pussy's with kick me signs on our backs.

I sketched out this scene last night and just started messing with it in photoshop. While I was coloring I decided to shift the colors and make it look like an offset silkscreen. That's the wonderful thing about photoshop, you can mimic pretty much any style quickly and cheap. The artificial look is cool but it just makes me want to do the real thing. I guess the fine artist inside me still has trouble accepting digital art as "ART". So this is my sorta tribute to retro comics.

Taking it to the streets

Inspired by a recent documentary I saw i'm taking our characters to a new place, THE STREETS BIATCH! Actually its a very familiar place, and with street art going main stream it seems appropriate to jump on the band wagon. It may be kinda cool to do some guerilla advertising, but a hell of a lot of work and not to mention the legal consequences. Soon they will have designated places to put up your non threatening street art, which will save time, effort and sleep without sacrificing the cool and edgy factor. We'll at least to those who don't know any better.

So here we are in the experimental phase. Having fun with it and kinda procrastinating from the real work that has to be done. I do know at some point I'm gonna have to jump in head first. I gave myself till the end of this year to complete the first draft of the comic. I still have a ways to go.

Til next time

KEEPS IT REALS YA'LL!

A few of our favorite things

Slowly but surely I continue to work on this comic venture. I have been concentrating on the look of the two main characters. I feel I am happy with the way they are (for now), but I still want to draw them in different styles. This is a more commercial, cleaner look. I may try doing something more graphic or even an expressive drawing/painting, maybe even silkscreen? The problem is there are to many options. I want to explore a few more options before I commit. The story kinda jumps around in time, so I was thinking about changing the style depending on where the characters are, past, present or future. In any case it feels great to be doing something creative. So, I'll just keep exploring these characters and see where they take me.

Comic Character Sketches

Its a new year and time to get back on track. Here are some sketches for 2 comic characters I am developing. These characters have gone through many versions and I think I may finally have a clear idea of what I want. They still need some work. The biggest challenge for me is consistency in my drawings. I want to get a solid style guide done and start putting together some short comic strips before moving on to the full length comic.

The last few months have been pretty hectic with my new job and all. I had to put this comic on the back burner. I am determined to get the comic completed by the end of the year, then look into getting it published. For now look out for Forever Freshman comic strips coming to a blog near you.

Happy New year

-Neil

Forever Freshman?

Hello everybody this is the first of what will hopefully be many blog postings about my new comic book venture. My good friend and partner in crime Ray Mendivel and I are in the process of creating a comic book, based on our high school years in unincorporated Whittier. The story takes place in the mid 90's during the summer before starting high school. The Characters interests include rocking out, girls, and tacos. Unfortunately they lack the skills and money to achieve any of these goals. It's sorta Tenacious D meets the Peanuts.

The working title right now is "Forever Freshmen", which may or may not change. We have the script pretty much done, I will be working on the art for the next couple months and I if all goes well I would like to have it self published by next summer. For now you can subscribe to this blog for regular updates.

Thanks for reading.
See you soon.

Gig Flyer

A flyer I did for an upcoming show at the rhythm lounge in downtown long beach

Life Drawings

Some recent life drawings using pen and ink and some watercolors. Freshening up on my drawing skills.

More Caricatures and Profiles

Another Caricature

My friend Jennie and her fiance Pedro. I'm doing a few of these for Valentines day, if you'd like one for yourself let me know.