The making of Hyperbole and a Half – in pictures

I was a horrible child – possibly the worst child. I ate an entire cake to spite my mother and spent weeks rampaging around in a psychotic, power-induced chaos-trance simply because I couldn't handle how powerful my dinosaur costume made me feel
© Allie Brosh

I am still a horrible, ridiculous creature, and I have been burdened with the unfortunate tendency to notice. Because of this, many of my stories are based on self-observation (centering on the horrible and ridiculous parts, mostly).
One of them is even based on myself observing myself while I'm observing myself!
© Allie Brosh

Surprisingly, some of my most popular stories are about my struggles with major depressive disorder. Humour has always been a coping mechanism for me, and I wanted to try to explain depression in a way that wasn't dramatic, overly sentimental, or a panicked barrage of positivity.
So I decided to try to explain it using humour. Combined, the two-part series took more than two years to write. Aside from the depression itself, striking the balance between comedy and treating the subject with enough respect was the hardest part
© Allie Brosh

I have a mentally impinged animal who has earned the title 'the simple dog'. It took her a week to learn how to walk up the stairs and another week to learn how to get back down. She refuses to stop eating bees no matter how miserable the experience is for her.
I also sometimes catch her eating dirt – not dirt with grass in it, or dirt that something was spilled upon, just dirt all by itself. Her only semi-intelligent behavior is becoming situationally quadriplegic at the exact moment I decide we need to leave the dog park
© Allie Brosh

My other dog earned the title of 'helper dog' before I discovered exactly how unhelpful she is. She hates everything, doesn't know anything, and suffers from insecurity-induced rage spirals.
I had originally hoped she would act as a service animal for the simple dog, but she's far too hateful and selfish
© Allie Brosh

For me, writing is a laborious process of zeroing in on the right 'shape'. And I've learned from experience that it's very important to finish the written portion of the story before I begin drawing.
If I don't do it this way, I'll have to make new drawings every time I need to shift the story structure around – which is often, and sometimes dramatic – and this almost always leads to hundreds of wasted hours and hundreds of wasted drawings
© Allie Brosh

The character I draw to represent myself looks squiggly and crude on the surface, but a lot of work goes into it. The goal isn't necessarily to draw something realistic or aesthetically pleasing, but rather, to communicate a very specific feeling in a very specific way.
And this ridiculous little thing is the perfect tool for communicating the specific shade of absurdity or silliness I'm going for
© Allie Brosh

I do many drafts – sometimes 30 or more – of each drawing, making small tweaks until it looks right to me.
Body language or an expression can be altered so much simply by moving the pupil of the eye a half millimeter or slightly altering the curve of the face or arm
© Allie Brosh

If you can believe it, my character started out even more simplistic and crude than it currently is. But sometimes I'd tweak it a little or discover a more comical way to draw it, and all those changes added up over time until I found its final identity.
I kept chasing this vague sense I had of how it should look, and eventually I settled on something that feels right
© Allie Brosh

Because my drawing style has evolved so much over time, I'd sometimes look at my older posts and think, 'If I just touched this up a little, or moved the eye a bit ... it would look so much funnier!'
And in my book, I finally got to update the art in my favorite old posts. I was careful to preserve the feel of the original pictures, and many readers may not even notice the changes. But for me, it makes a huge difference
© Allie Brosh