(SPOT.ph) A good number of Metro Manila's workforce has been working from home since the community quarantine started in March. We've been juggling looking after the kids while in the middle of a Zoom meeting or beating deadlines while cooking lunch and dinner. We've been working in our pajamas for a while now; and while it has its upsides, there are some things we miss about going to the office and having actual officemates. Thirty-five-year old comics creator Ramark Masangcay takes inspiration from these work-related woes and turns them into Opismeyts—a web comics that's about, well, office life whether online or offline.
Why Opismeyts Is All Too Real
Opismeyts is about "daily mundane routines that regular opismeyts collectively experience," Masangcay tells SPOT.ph in an online exchange. Topics range from doing overtime, filing sick leaves and vacation leaves, resisiting the distraction of social media in the middle of a work day, and—of course—commuting to the office. He also takes inspiration from scenes from our work-from-home lives, such as receiving a package from Lazada or Shopee, virtual meetings, and spotty Internet connection.
"The scenes portrayed in my komiks are a mixed variety of actual personal experiences, some overheard conversations, some common workplace stories (not necessarily my own experience), and some overly exaggerated and weird scenarios," the Opismyets creator adds.
Masangcay is actually a telecom engineer by day, so he has his own share of office stories to tell. He says he tries to find the humor in seemingly ordinary events, capture them in four panels, and hopefully make someone laugh.
From Model Employees to Opismeyts
Opismeyts started out as Model Employees back in 2011. "My officemate Gerry and I were having several conversations about typical office shenanigans. Those conversations gave me the idea to create a slice-of-life komiks about regular office employees and their daily experiences both in and out of work," Masangcay narrates. He was able to create 20 comic strips and seven of them were uploaded on modelemployeescomics.blogspot.com.
After a while, he stopped creating Model Employees "for reasons [he] can't remember," and only revisted the idea in 2015. He wanted to set up a website named modelemployees.com, but the domain is already taken. "I ended up going with Opismeyts, which now I think is the better name since it sounds more Pinoy," he adds.
Taking Inspiration From Pugad Baboy
"Clean solid line works with simple flat colors" is how Masangcay would describe his style. He is a big fan of Pol Media Jr. and Pugad Baboy, which most fans would see as a huge influence in his work.
"I first read his book when I borrowed my classmate's Pugad Baboy 3 in third grade and immediately loved it. I started collecting his book in highschool when I had a little bit more allowance," he says.
And like most artists, he's been drawing since grade school—copying illustrations from Marvel and Dragonball playing cards. He often represented his class in poster-making contests, but would lose because of his amateur coloring skills. The last art-related gig he had before diving into the corporate world (and before Opismeyts) was serving as the illustrator for his college school paper.
"I guess the boundaries between home and work got blurred (or totally disappeared in some cases) when people started working from home. Things that we're supposed to manage separately sometimes present themselves simultaneously that we end up dealing with both home and work issues at the same time, and that can be exhausting. And also, poor Internet connection," Masangcay says about the challenges in the shift to working from home.
And until we figure out how to best deal with this new set-up, there's Opismyets to laugh about.
Follow Opismeyts on Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Twitter, and YouTube. Opismeyts Issue #1 can be read for free on Penlab, while Opismeyts stickers and shirts are available on the Facebook page.
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