Witch
How does an encounter with another being change who I am?
Witch explores the relationship between a human character who originated in The SHHAN and a black cat. From playful scenes inspired by Japanese manga to bodily transformations influenced by Multiverse, digital and pen drawings trace how the two change through being together. Their relationship is not a story added to a finished character: it is what allows that character’s form and identity to change.
Witch began as a human character in The SHHAN before becoming the focus of an independent project. In a world shaped by the long conflict between White Cats and Black Cats, she belonged to neither people. She was imagined as the first human to form a bond with one of the black cats regarded as wild beasts.
Rather than continuing that world’s wars and history, this project turns toward a single encounter within it. Drawing closer to the conflict between peoples and civilizations leaves one Witch and one black cat. The focus becomes imagining how two beings might change through being together, rather than explaining a character’s place in an already established world.
A figure who did not belong in the world of The SHHAN begins to find her place through a relationship with a black cat. Instead of advancing toward a fixed mission or ending, her story unfolds through scenes in which their distance and roles change.
Witch Manga gives this relationship its most playful and direct expression. Drawing on the rough lines, exaggerated proportions, and freedom of composition of the Japanese manga he has long enjoyed, SHHAN depicts the two together. Here, Manga is less the name of a continuous comic than a way of freely imagining their relationship.
The black cat may grow large enough to carry Witch, or become a small companion beside her. Witch moves between being protected and taking part as an equal. These changes in scale and role do not signify a rewritten character profile. The same two beings can suggest a different relationship depending on the positions from which they see each other. Rather than fixing those positions, SHHAN changes them from scene to scene.
This interest continues in the pen drawings. The three works in Witch & Black Cat do not begin a separate story from the digital pieces; they revisit the same two beings through another medium. Without an elaborate explanation of their world, simply placing them together invites thoughts about distance, intimacy, and power.
The expression of their relationship extends beyond changes in size and posture to changes in the boundaries between bodies and their surroundings. Inspired by Multiverse, Witch: Awakening explores that possibility. In Multiverse, flowing and distorted bodies expressed the transformation of a being passing through different worlds. Here, that visual language becomes a way to express change between Witch and the black cat.
Liquid- and smoke-like forms no longer remain in the background but mingle with the outlines of bodies. Beings that appeared separate become connected through a shared flow, suggesting that an encounter with another can unsettle one’s own boundaries. Awakening is less a definition of a new power or its origin than a state of encountering possibilities within oneself that a relationship has brought to light.
This transformation is not expressed only through digital work. Witch: Awakening #6 is a pen drawing. Carrying the same question between digital images and hand-drawn lines makes the difference in medium a way of expressing one relationship differently, rather than dividing it into separate worlds.
A deepening relationship does not mean becoming a single being. Witch and the black cat affect each other while remaining distinct. The cat is not simply owned or controlled by a human, and Witch is not defined only as someone it protects. What matters is less who is larger or stronger than how their positions change when they are together.
The series and individual works in Witch are not a catalogue explaining a finished character. They record an exploration of what a relationship can change, repeatedly drawing the same two beings while shifting the viewpoint and means of expression. A small encounter in The SHHAN thus grew beyond a story attached to that world and became an independent body of work.
Their differences make a relationship possible, and that relationship changes each of them in turn. Through these images of two beings together, Witch asks how an encounter with another can change who we are.