Witchy is a fantasy webcomic by Ariel Slamet Ries that started in 2014. The webcomic follows the young witch Nyneve in a world where magical proficiency is based on the length of one's hair. Though the world of Witchy is culturally and ethnically diverse, its characters are marginalized based on their hair length. Ries uploads one page of the webcomic per week as she is studying animation. Witchy was nominated for an Ignatz award in 2015. Synopsis The webcomic Witchy is set in a world where the length of one's hair indicates the magical proficiency one has, and people with long hair are considered enemies of the state. Witchy follows the story of the young witch Nyneve, whose long-haired father was burned at the stake by the kingdom's royal "Witch Guard" while she was still a child. As she grows older, Nyneve has to decide whether she will accept being conscripted into the Witch Guard or go rogue. She hides the length of her hair while outside of her house to avoid conscription, while her classmates at school each have their own problems and ambitions. Ziah Grace of Comics Alliance described Witchy as a webcomic about the systems of a society: "both the ability of a widespread system to continue and the ability of the individual to survive within them." Grace describes Nyneve as the "product of a society that grinds up outliers." Nyneve's situation is contrasted with that of her classmate Prill, who finds herself much more accepted into the society but who feels ostracized at home. Development Ariel Ries is an animation student at The Animation Workshop in Denmark and Witchy is her first major project. She wrote the story for her webcomic during 2012 and 2013: Witchy was originally intended to be a short story about a witch village where witches were slowly disappearing into the surrounding woods. The hair-based hierarchy was centered on color at the time, and the protagonist would dye her hair to disguise the fact that she was weak. Ries decided to go with hair length instead after a friend brought up the idea, and she wanted to create a society where prejudice was not based on race, gender, sexuality, or disability. Witchy was initially very derivative of the fantasy works by Jean Giraud, but Ries later decided she wanted her webcomic to be inspired by Asia rather than Europe. Ries created the