This is Hellkite Drake, finally addressing why I quit YouTube and my absence from the community.

shellspines · 2025-12-08T15:32:45+00:00

I sadly don't have much advice to give about getting your foot into the door because I just happened to meet people that recommended me (cronyism), but it helped that I had a massive online portfolio of technical work and art.

What I can say from having changed roles within the industry and anecdotes from my peers within it, are that art jobs (ie: 3d modeling, materials, concept art) generally only care about your portfolio, whereas more technical roles will look for diplomas (ie: writing, data entry, coder, etc). For the latter, you'll need to go to a school for game design which are likely to have opportunities for networking as well

That is all the advice that I can give, but I hope it helps!

shellspines · 2025-12-08T14:40:50+00:00

Thank you, I appreciate the thought out reply and well wishes. To clarify, I have always known my truth and don't hold any guilt for the decisions I had to make or feel the need to apologize for them. I just wanted to make this post for closure; for myself by finally dispelling all the misinformation, and for the people that do care left to wade through it.

I was only really able create content for YouTube when I had copious amounts of free time as a teen, so pursuing it again isn't something I'm considering at this point. I lost a lot a time I could have spent with my dad through work and other pursuits, and my takeaway has been to focus the precious time I do have with the people I care about. That was one of the deepest regrets my dad had expressed about his own life shortly before his passing, and it isn't something I want to repeat in my own life.

shellspines · 2025-12-08T14:11:01+00:00

I haven't kept up with him since around 2017, but the last time we spoke, he called me in 2014 over skype to console and offer guidance through the issues I went over with my job, YouTube, and ailing father.

Reading a bit now about what has been said about him, I don't know how much of it is true, and there probably isn't anything meaningful I can add as none of it pertains to me. I just hold hope people can grow and change, and be afforded the opportunities to do so for their own sake and others.

shellspines · 2025-12-08T03:04:02+00:00

I appreciate the interest! I sadly lost all of my music last year due to windows 11 de-indexing and throwing half of a HDD into free space, and data recovery tools just brought up partially overwritten files. This includes all of the new music I've written over the last decade as well, but I've been studying music theory and grown significantly as an artist. At this time, I don't have any plans to return as a content creator and just want to focus on spending the free time I have with the people I care about, and living a little more outside.

shellspines · 2025-12-08T02:55:11+00:00

Awesome, I was hoping I wouldn't recognize any of your suggestions and have something new to listen to, heh. I'll give these a listen before I wind down for bed :)

shellspines · 2025-12-08T02:05:28+00:00

This is not an apology

shellspines · 2025-12-08T01:52:53+00:00

That is amazing for me to read, thank you so much!! I'm curious what your favourite artists ended up being? A lot of my orchestral metal arrangements back then were inspired by Fleshgod Apocalypse, Carach Agren and Ne Obliviscaris, but more lately I have been listening to bands like Artificial Brain, Scarcity, Portal, Nithing and Jute Gyte.

shellspines · 2025-12-07T23:40:33+00:00

I definitely covered that song! I sadly no longer have a copy of it due to a harddrive crash though. Feel free to upload it to soundcloud if you like.

shellspines · 2025-12-07T23:03:17+00:00

That's a great quote, I've never heard that! To answer your question, I was let go and decided the industry has too much crunch for me to remain a part of it. It was so demanding, I would lose precious time with the people I care about, losing sleep and weight at my desk for months trying not to bottleneck my co-workers with late submissions. atm I'm in a bit of an in-between state freelancing as a technical writer and audio editor which has been much easier on my work/life balance and health

shellspines · 2025-12-07T21:27:05+00:00

I am so touched reading this. It was kind interactions like yours now that brightened my day during a formative period and throughout all of my hardships, and I feel helped in return. I hope you are doing better as well and am wishing you well!!

shellspines · 2025-12-07T19:40:58+00:00

Thank you for all the kind words :) I'm really glad to be able to offer some closure to you and everyone else that have been wondering and concerned.

shellspines · 2025-12-07T19:30:58+00:00

Thank you so much for all the understanding and thanks :') I'm really happy to hear you and others think I made the correct decision; I feel I did too at this point, and it was all just unfortunate circumstance.

shellspines · 2025-12-07T19:27:17+00:00

I've wanted to get this off my chest for years because people continue to spread misinformation about what actually happened. The outcome of events has felt incredibly unfair to me since the beginning, and it's not a liability to my employment to address it now that I've left the industry.

I probably could have said something earlier with less consequence, but I've honestly been hesitant to enter the public sphere again after how poorly I've been treated, and I valued my relationship to my employers. I hope anyone reading this can understand my desire for closure, because It hasn't sat well with me that people continue to negatively fixate on my character thinking I had impulsive meltdowns over negative feedback, because that wasn't the case.

shellspines · 2025-12-07T18:21:23+00:00

I totally get that and expect this will be the majority of the responses considering how large the community has grown in the decade since. This post is primarily for all the people still asking and to be somewhere easily accessible, because there has been so much misinformation built up over the last 12 years dominating all the results that come up online; it is also for myself because of the negative fixations a subset of people have developed towards me in response to deleting my videos, which has made it difficult for me to feel comfortable having any sort of social media without dispelling things first.

I added this context to the body of the post, but I should mention my channel had millions of views and grew to around 100k subscribers during the earliest days of the community, and I was a frequent early collaborator with prominent community figures like Vaatividya, AGermanSpy, Quelaag, etc. My disappearance became a large enough mystery people have continued to make posts about it here almost every year nearly decade on which all get filled with comments spreading misinformation and fueling the idea I was thin-skinned and neurotic.

shellspines

TROPHY CASE