Notional, non-diegetic backgrounds are definitely my friend in Chelsea and Millie. To enhance or imply mood and/or vibe, tonal balance, impressions-creation via the visual manifestation of abstract ideas presented within dialogue or commingled with foreground action.

Plus they give me a break from doing more detailed backgrounds all the time and help avoid cluttering up the page with too much stuff. My sense of page-balance and composition is very much intuitively based, and in a large part comes from me having been a film junkie since childhood. I’ve absorbed this stuff from a very young age via those who can frame an image far more deftly than I.

Big sister Chelsea likes roleplaying as being in position of authority. Who’d a thunk it. She can be a bit bossy at times, but please don’t hold that against her. We all have our flaws, and she conducts herself pretty well for a lively nine-year-old heteroclite. Most of the time.