Soulless

my general tumblr my cetacean tumblr If you're here and confused because you got an ask or mail from me about whale stuff, it's because this is my main, and I run derangedhyena-delphinidae.

[derangedhyena-soulless]

Finally upgraded my old Cintiq. A little behind on things due to work and some health issues, but still making steady progress. ✌️

[derangedhyena-soulless]

Updated my older poster design with new work. :)

[derangedhyena-soulless]

derangedhyena art | Patreon

art and stories

Hey all, I've set up a Patreon. Don't worry, updates and such will still be posted here! But if you want to directly support this project, thru this (or sharing my stuff around!) is the best way you can right now. No pressure or anything, just creating the option for those interested. Thank you!

[derangedhyena-soulless]

@alfafilly brought up something that I realize I might not have been clear about before: what's being made right now is a complete revision of the story. Same characters, same idea, just... Turn every knob up to 11 I guess. I got older. Wiser. Angrier. :P Am I excited to have thrown out 500+ pages of comic? Absolutely not. But I'm confident this revised version of the story (now with a solid ending, solid narrative arc and format that allows its structure to be what it wanted all along - fucking weird*) is what it should be.

A short history of This Story, for anyone who might be interested (I will tell a detailed version later, this omits Many Things.) In '03-04 I got the initial idea at community college when a classmate clambered up onto a table with a guitar and proceeded to belt out an intense, amazing version of Jewel's "Who Will Save Your Soul." It got stuck in my head and that, combined with two random books I'd been reading at the time and some music. It congealed into the first version of the story which was like... 22 pages long. Short story. v1. v2 came shortly after, because Jim and Serenity have always had the world's mightiest Need to be in the damn story and yhea. (Jim was in the first draft, Serenity was not.) This is a shitty picture of this Actual Painting (which is also shittily old) but look at the timestamp.

I spent awhile waffling about how to include a mech in a story that firmly started with 0 mechs. I went through multiple kind of ridiculous iterations of adding mechs in, my mind pattern-matching to "how to mech in media" while my brain screamed that I wanted mindfuck and characters and Not Standard Mech In Media. I drew about 300 pages of layout for the comic before I started drawing the actual pages (v3). I had a rough idea of where I was going, and figured I could get from A to B just fine. Wrong: I threw out about half of that 300 pages about ~100 actual pages in, reworked things, drew more layout, continued. That's the version I worked on for a long time. (v4.) Over this period I asked myself questions I didn't have good answers for, and that deeply irritated me as a writer. I realized I'd built a house with hopes, dreams, and a blurry phone pic of blueprints instead of... you know, actual structure. I had a strong sense for like 4 years that I'd started at the wrong point. Then in 2019 Starset's stupid fucking album [affectionate] Divisions came out and contained Perfect Machine and I had, basically, something bordering on a creative religious-experience in which I Understood(tm) Jim immensely (and I wrote Terminus at that time.) Needless to say it upended a lot of things, and I struggled to give myself permission to *throw out everything* and try again because... I mean, fuck, wouldn't you? But I'd had a lot of small (and not-so-small) revisions that'd been stacking up in the mental backrooms for awhile. And then it was 2020 and I got laid off and my life kinda fucking imploded for awhile and then now it's 2025 and I've sorted things out, including how this story should be told. And now's that time. I'm ready, and it's ready. (*this stupid music video is what gave me the concept initially. I blame it for the beautiful disaster-mess structure I have now created.)

[derangedhyena-soulless]

New coverart. New website for things. Ayyy.

[derangedhyena-soulless]

As I mentioned earlier in the year, I'm gonna be hiring VAs. I'm doing some early casting, so if you know anyone looking for VA work who'd be a match, please do lob them my way. I'll prob do a post for tumblr specifically too, just wanted to throw this out there too.

[derangedhyena-soulless]

Found a perfect font for the revision. And did a test animation with it. Definitely going with this one.

[derangedhyena-soulless]

I WILL be hiring VAs for this project, how extensively depends entirely on how much I'm able to raise (or not), but. As I don't have my wordcount stuff ready I haven't made any serious inquiries yet, but if anyone following knows any folks who do VA work, please let me know and/or nudge them my way. I'm ESPECIALLY keen on getting the right VAs for Jim and Adrian, and Jim's gonna be difficult so... the more feelers I can get out there, the better. Thanks all!

[derangedhyena-soulless]

The new weapon of choice is going to be a kinetic novel (visual novel without branches.) Basically, as close as I can practically get to making a movie... while still being doable as a solo project. I've revised the entire story and am finalizing the script for wordcount purposes (to see how much it might cost to hire VAs.) The best parts of scriptwriting and the best parts of a graphic novel, plus I get to animate stuff...

[derangedhyena-soulless]

I dunno if anyone's still here, but. Things are happening. It'll be awhile because I have a lot of new work to do, but. I'm excited.

[cuuno-moved]

i think we as a society need to use cell phones/laptops/cars/backpacks to flesh out characters

[cuuno-moved]

like. a character has a cracked phone screen and a dozen stickers and a glittery case and a photo of their dog as a background. that says so much

[cuuno-moved]

or a character has a completely plain phone with no decorations and a default home screen and all the contacts are people's first names with no profile photos. except for one contact which is a stupid nickname and a shot of someone taken at a very unflattering angle. you know?

[cuuno-moved]

or cars!!! someone who has a disgusting car, with trash everywhere and mud caking the seats, but the passenger seat is always clean, because someone else always cleans it for them.

[derangedhyena-soulless]

simultaneously something that I have considered heavily (more recently) and something that has given me an entire crisis because when I started with Soulless, smartphones weren't even a thing, and now they'd *definitely* be involved and sdgfhsdfuerfhsdgfdhsfds

[derangedhyena-soulless]

I doubt very few people but me remain interested, but I’ve been straightening up older files and found some sketches I don’t think I ever shared on the blog.

[tell-me-about-your-ocs]

Big OC Question of the Week #1

Tell me, what is your OC’s relationship with their parents?

[derangedhyena-soulless]

…I just realized that ONLY ONE of my main cast in Soulless has A POSITIVE, ACTUAL PARENT PRESENT IN THEIR LIVES, AND IT’S WES. Jim’s parents: super dead Adrian’s parents: absent dad and mom’s dead Nick’s parents: probably dead, can’t imagine he really got along with them or that there wasn’t a divorce involved there somewhere Valerie/Christa’s parents: bad relationship. NOT DEAD, AT LEAST

[tell-me-about-your-ocs]

S-super dead?!

A lot of late and absentee parents, I wonder how they each end up dealing with it.

[derangedhyena-soulless]

“poorly”, to be succinct... By super dead, I just mean they were both killed when Jim was very young (read: bad accident that he survived), so he effectively has no memory of them. He didn’t have a terribly stable or good upbringing as a result (and, yes, it absolutely does factor in to his less-than-great adult self)

Adrian’s parent-centered drama is a major factor of a lot of conflict in the first part of the story. Nick’s his legal guardian, but Nick’s not and has never been that great of a “dad.” Too much Friend, not enough Parent. Adrian’s in sore need of functional guidance and a parental figure he can actually look up to.  Which Jim brings to the table... but a bit disingenuously, because he does so per his recognition that it’d be really easy to manipulate Adrian that way. Since he’s a covert narcissist whose entire MO is being a piece of shit. (as he gets to know Adrian though, he sees a lot of his own young self in him, and ends up gaining a skill point in actual human empathy/friendship. which he uh, figures out way too late, but. well.)  I need to do proper art of Wes’s mom 🥺

[tell-me-about-your-ocs]

Big OC Question of the Week #1

Tell me, what is your OC’s relationship with their parents?

[derangedhyena-soulless]

...I just realized that ONLY ONE of my main cast in Soulless has A POSITIVE, ACTUAL PARENT PRESENT IN THEIR LIVES, AND IT’S WES. Jim’s parents: super dead Adrian’s parents: absent dad and mom’s dead Nick’s parents: probably dead, can’t imagine he really got along with them or that there wasn’t a divorce involved there somewhere Valerie/Christa’s parents: bad relationship. NOT DEAD, AT LEAST

[what-the-prompts]

Person A: " What do you see yourself doing?"

Person B: " Alone, on the couch, and eating a whole cake."

Person A: "I mean in life."

Person B: "Alone, on the couch, eating a whole cake with champagne."

[derangedhyena-soulless]

[derangedhyena-soulless]

I’ll eventually get back to posting updates (promise.) In the meantime I’m just gonna put Highly Suitable Songs here.

[develop-your-oc]

If your OC had to wear a warning label, what would it be for?

[derangedhyena-soulless]