Encoding Challenge Example- Hyperbole and a Half

The encoding challenge example I wish to discuss is Allie Brosh’s Hyperbole and a Half, more specifically the page our group decided upon. As previously noted, this book is a comedic piece of literature that uses a variety of images and texts together to tell a story. Within the book, “unfortunate situations, flawed coping mechanisms, mayhem, and other things that happened” in Allie Brosh’s life are presented. The contents are full of funny tales that are quite entertaining.  

The page we chose reveals a rather large and complicated thought-process of the central character. A number of thought clouds and speech bubbles are jumbled in an intricate web of ideas. Not only is the entire piece full of information, but also a great use of colour and diverse fonts set the tone and concept. Emphasis is given on certain sections within the chart due to these contrasting elements. For this assignment, the particular challenge will be to decide how we might convey the step-by-step development of the author’s ideas.

Although we have not quite started to encode the image, a few considerations have been presented. We discussed what elements would be essential to represent, which areas we would need to omit, and how we would show the relationship between the different speech bubbles. Above all, the most pressing concern has been on how we might demonstrate the interconnectedness of the entire piece. A number of arrows point between related thoughts and branch out without any precise order. Sometimes even more arrows are drawn to emphasize the importance of a sub-thought. There is always the question whether to make a distinction based on the stress through arrows or not. We might be able to create a tag to signify the use of arrows, yet nothing is finalized for the XML code. Certainly, several nested hierarchies will be beneficial and likely will be utilized; however, it is still unclear whether we will take the entire piece as one block, with a top and bottom, or break it into separate sections with their own ‘headings’.

Regardless of our final decisions, the project shall be an entertaining and interesting endeavour. The subject of comedy and the significance of context, through both text and image, will be a challenge to represent effectively. We look forward to the result and hopefully we are successful.