Life & Work with Ismael Alejandro of Tijuana, Mexico

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ismael Alejandro.

Hi Ismael Alejandro, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
My name is Ismael Alejandro Moreno Ozuna (my friends call me Isma, but I also go by my initials for short) and I’m a cartoonist, character designer, and the creator of Nerdmigos, a geek culture webcomic and podcast en español, produced from Tijuana, Mexico.

The story of Nerdmigos really is the story of my career as an independent artist. It started in 2009 as a webcomic: just me, drawing on copier paper and playing around in Photoshop, with the stubborn conviction that there was an audience for Mexican geek humor that wasn’t being served. I wasn’t wrong, but I also wasn’t in a hurry. It took twelve years before Nerdmigos became a podcast. In 2021, encouraged by my friend Adrián Zambrano, creator of the Valle de Cielo Gris podcast, I finally hit record. What had been a comic strip became a full conversation: news, reviews, interviews, and the kind of enthusiastic overthinking that only happens when you genuinely love the stuff you’re talking about.

In parallel, I’ve continued working as an independent artist, taking on character design, illustration, and creative projects of all kinds. Somewhere along the way, I also founded Sketchbook Club Tijuana, now celebrating its 12th year with free monthly Drink & Draw gatherings. No cover charge, no agenda. Just a space where local artists can show up, draw, and maybe find their people. What happens after that is up to them.

This year, Nerdmigos received a Latin Podcast Awards nomination. The awards are celebrating their 10th anniversary, and this is the first time Nerdmigos has been nominated. The winners will be announced at a ceremony in Miami on October 12, 2026. It is kind of a big deal, and I am absolutely thrilled and honored.

This year I also began teaching at an art college, which means I now spend some mornings sharing my creative worldview and passing on what I’ve learned to the next generation of artists, and some evenings recording a podcast about nerd stuff and whether Disney Star Wars is the same as Lucas Star Wars. (It’s not.)

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The road has been anything but smooth, but the challenges have been instructive in ways I didn’t expect.

The most honest answer is that I do almost everything myself: the writing, the recording, the editing, the graphic design, the social media, the website, the merch. All of it. That’s both liberating and quietly exhausting. There’s a version of independence that feels like creative freedom, and there’s a version that feels like being a one-person band who is also in charge of setting up the stage and selling tickets at the door.

The second challenge is balance. Being an independent creator isn’t a single job. It’s several jobs running simultaneously, each one demanding more than the hours available. This year, adding teaching to the mix forced me to get serious about structure in a way I had been avoiding. It turns out that having a schedule is not the enemy of creativity. Who knew.

The third challenge, and perhaps the most invisible one, is creating in Spanish from Tijuana, in a media landscape where the center of gravity is still very much Los Angeles and New York. The audience is there: millions of Spanish-speaking geeks who love Star Wars, Marvel, Nintendo, and anime just as much as anyone else. But the infrastructure, the industry attention, and the opportunities don’t always follow. You build the thing anyway and trust that the audience will find you.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Being a cartoonist is the thread that connects everything I do. It came before the podcast, before the Sketch Club, before the merch store, and it will probably outlast all of them.

Character design is where I feel most at home, perhaps because of my background as a communication specialist, where clarity and intention are everything. There’s something deeply satisfying about translating a personality, sometimes a real person, sometimes a concept, sometimes just a feeling, into a visual language that someone else immediately understands. A good character design is clear and informative, but it’s also a kind of shorthand for the soul.

Nerdmigos started as an extension of that sensibility: the main characters are caricatures, the humor is visual, and the whole aesthetic is rooted in the tradition of comic strip storytelling, with my main influences being Peanuts and Mutts, and an ever-growing list of animated cartoons. The podcast added voices and conversation to what had been a purely drawn world, and that combination of cartoonist making audio content turns out to work surprisingly well.

What I’m most proud of isn’t any single project. It’s the consistency. Fifteen years of showing up, drawing, recording, and building something that didn’t exist before I made it.

Are there any books, apps, podcasts or blogs that help you do your best?
A few things that have genuinely shaped how I work and think:

Books:

– The Silver Way by Stephen Silver: a masterclass in character design from a friend and mentor. If you draw people for a living, this book belongs on your desk, not your shelf.

– Peak Mind by Amishi P. Jha, PhD: a science-based approach to attention and focus that changed how I think about creative work and presence. Essential reading for anyone who makes things independently.

Podcasts:

– Art Side of Life (Iva Mikles) and Pencil Kings: two podcasts that kept me company during the years when building an art career felt more theoretical than real.

– Your Creative Push (Youngman Brown): exactly what the title says. It ended in 2020, but it remains required listening for any creative who struggles with resistance, which is all of us.

– Rebel Force Radio and Fatman Beyond (Kevin Smith): the two podcasts that most directly inspired the tone and format of Nerdmigos. Passionate, knowledgeable fans talking about the things they love. That’s the whole idea.

– Well… That’s Interesting (Jill ChaCha) and Valle de Cielo Gris: a special shoutout to Valle de Cielo Gris, a Spanish-language audio drama in which I actually voiced a character. Proof that the independent creative community in Latin America is doing genuinely exciting work.

Pricing:

• Nerdmigos merch is available at nerdmigos.dashery.com, featuring t-shirts, accessories, and original designs, all created by me (IAMO).
• For illustration and character design commissions, inquiries are welcome at iamodoodles.com.
• Sketchbook Club Tijuana Drink & Draw meetups are always free to attend. No registration, no fees. Just show up and draw.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.nerdmigos.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/Nerdmigos
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nerdmigos
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iamo76/
• Twitter: https://x.com/Nerdmigos
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Nerdmigos
• Other: https://iamodoodles.com/

Image Credits
Ismael Alejandro Moreno Ozuna (IAMO).