This is a character and strip my wife & I collaborated on inspired by my incredibly talented daughter. She is a passionate animal lover and a prolific artist, constantly making hand made plush out of her head without any patterns or reference…she just does it. Wish we could be so uninhibited…*sigh.
Isabella is a retro girl in a modern world. She and her dog CoCo enjoy their hip lifestyle in the big city! With a passion for fashion, their outfits never clash when they hit the scene.
City Girl is about Isabella, a 16 year old who lives in the hustle and bustle world of New York. She lives in a brownstone in the bohemian “East Village” with her parents, younger brother, sister and pet poodle CoCo Chanel.
In addition to having an eye and passion for fashion, Isabella is an artist in various media. She draws, sews together super cute toy plush of her own designs, and makes clothing not just for herself, but for the animals at the animal shelter she works at to make them adorably cute, in order to help get them adopted.
She writes a column for her school newspaper and writes about animals and happenings in the school and city while interweaving the daily teen angst she witnesses and experiences. Isabella faces challenges like most teenage girls, regarding growing up, school, siblings, friends and peer pressure. But what makes City Girl special is Isabella’s ever so sweet personality and caring attitude towards people and animals, which is sometimes an immediate reaction or comes as an epifany during one of her adventures. Like most of us, she struggles with materialism and at times bucks the mainstream and finds alternatives to issues and her own individuality.
CoCo does talk and is somewhat of a “Yoda” or mentor to Isabella, but CoCo converses only to Isabella and other animals. Ideas for stories; Isabella is caught up in the hype of a new shoe line and trying to obtain a pair for herself. She is scrambling all over the internet and city trying to find them. After various mishaps, finds a pair too big, a last pair is sold right in front of her, a street vendor sells her fakes, she gets a pair, but sees a homeless girl that could use them more and gives them to her. She then takes a pair of old shoes and adds her artistic flair to them, “Unique on the Cheap!” often becomes a tag line for her.