'Grotesque' young cartoonists make light of the stresses of city living

Jasmine Tse Man-yan laughingly rejects the "ugly" label for the female character she creates. The double-chinned, sloppily dressed homebody is the antithesis of the cute, doe-eyed ones favoured in Japanese cartoons.

A designer at an electronics company, Tse began drawing hilarious scenarios featuring a self-referencing singleton named Tse Sai Pei as a fun way to liven up her Facebook page. Within a year, the 25-year-old has not only attracted more than 68,000 followers and released a book, she was also invited to hold a solo exhibition at Mingshi Gallery in Central, which opened last week.

"Inspiration for my work comes from my daily life and [the] stories I hear from people around me. I love observing and talking to people from different walks of life," says Tse, who studied visual arts at Baptist University.

"Nobody is born with a sense of humour, rather, I think it's cultivated. I'm a big fan of [comedian-director] Stephen Chow Sing-chi and I watch a lot of foreign television shows such as Modern Family and The Big Bang Theory, which are very different from local 'housewives' soaps. Humour is very much related to creativity. Humour is an art."

Meet Hong Kong's so-called grotesque young cartoonists. The description is a compliment of sorts - it refers more to their attitude and jaundiced takes on Hong Kong life than poor technique. Like Tse, many started posting their drawings on personal Facebook pages to share with friends. But a few, including Ip Yan and Panwa, have garnered sufficient interest that they are contributing regular strips to magazines, and publishing collections of their work.

Another visual arts alumna from Baptist University, Ip delivers social commentary through her Plastic Thing page on Facebook. Developed as an extension of a graduation project in which she invented a festival for each day of the year, the 23-year-old often takes aim at the foibles of young people like herself.

There's a series of "tutorials" for wannabe social climbers who pretend to be overseas-born Chinese with heavily accented Cantonese or no Cantonese at all; a strip satirising the fad of taking Instagrams of trivial things and another on people who doctor digital photos to post more attractive images of themselves online.