By: Marcy Paulson
Walid De Sousa has taken on a monumental challenge, and the clock is ticking down to the project’s launch. As the Founder and Creative Director of Hellmann LLC, an independent multimedia entertainment studio, he is constructing the HELL Universe. This original transmedia IP spans an illustrated comic series, music, and YouTube content.
Hellmann LLC is targeting a public launch on January 31, 2027, across all divisions simultaneously. It’s a moonshot schedule, and fans are already speculating on what they will find when the portals open.
Walid De Sousa’s Path To Founding Hellmann LLC And Assembling A Multi-Departmental Remote Creator Collective From Scratch
Like many founders in the arts, De Sousa began with a hunger. “The inspiration behind the HELL Universe was pretty organic,” he remembers. “For a long time, creators like us have wanted to push the industry further, and you can feel this quiet demand for bigger, more ambitious passion projects. We’re trying to answer that in a way that feels new.”
That direction became Hellmann LLC, a company built through relationships and the slow, practical trust that forms when people keep showing up for each other’s work. The fully remote and multi-departmental team is organized around 2D art, 3D development, music production, and a YouTube division called Team Catabasis.
“Most of the people on this journey started as friends, collaborators, or mentors,” De Sousa explains. “As the studio took shape, their positions naturally took shape with it.”
It’s an approach that runs on community support and chemistry, but chemistry doesn’t pay the bills. De Sousa is open about what it has cost to keep the dream moving forward.
“Honestly, it’s been rough at times,” he says. “The scope is so big that there were years when I chose the project over basic comforts like keeping the lights on and even owning a car.”
For this founder, the HELL Universe is an obsession. It gives him and his team the steady willingness to keep choosing the work.
“I’m basically always in work mode,” De Sousa adds. “And a lot of the team is the same way. The longer you live like this, the more normal it becomes. Now, I feel restless if I’m not building.”
The Operational Reality Of Coordinating A Simultaneous Multimedia Launch As A Remote Creative Studio
The HELL Universe isn’t designed as a single adaptation pipeline. It’s designed as a connected system, where each format is part of the canon and its own on-ramp into the story.
“HELL (The Walkthrough) is a wide-open world,” De Sousa says. “I think a lot of people can see themselves in it. There are huge ideas about time travel, space, magic, and fate. But everything stays grounded because it’s experienced through the lives of four people playing one tabletop RPG.”
There’s a lot of lore, but De Sousa is building it around the intimacy of friendship. It’s a coming-of-age story with cosmic stakes, but personal consequences.
Logistically, it also means Hellmann LLC has to coordinate multiple creative departments at once. For example, the look of the characters in 2D, the feel of the world in 3D, the emotional language of the music, and the audience’s relationship with it on YouTube must all align.
“We build everything together,” De Sousa says. “We’re close, and people will feel that on the launch. You can already feel it in each of our meetings and in how we talk about the upcoming videos and events.”
That closeness is especially evident in Team Catabasis, Hellmann LLC’s YouTube content division, whose work centers around the story infrastructure and characters the fans will come to know over time. The creators leading each associate channel include a comedy gaming YouTuber, a competitive gaming YouTuber, a video essayist, and an illustrator.
“What’s exciting is how connected the channels are,” De Sousa reflects. “The content flows between creators in a way that lets us build ongoing story threads across multiple videos and channels. If you’re already into internet culture storytelling, you’ll recognize the appeal. But we’re aiming to push the format further, and add more faces over the next year.”
Even the team’s name is a clue to the studio’s mission. These four aren’t just creators. They’re the on-screen presences fans will recognize in the actual-play webcomic, HELL (The Walkthrough). The Greek word katábasis, translated as “a descent into the underworld,” hints at what the YouTube side of the team does. It’s an entry point that guides people deeper into the expanding new world.
The Culmination Of The Vision For Creator-Led Entertainment And The Hell Universe
On January 31, 2027, De Sousa plans to launch the HELL Universe publicly, with comic, music, and YouTube divisions moving in sync, each reinforcing the others.
“When we finally drop everything, I want people to feel like they’ve found a story they can carry with them for years,” De Sousa says. “We’re pouring ourselves into it, and I think audiences are hungry right now for creative work that feels genuine and unique.”
Hellmann LLC isn’t chasing trends. It’s betting on craft and the kind of interconnected storytelling that makes fans feel like they’ve discovered something new and all their own.
For any creator with a half-built universe in a folder on their desktop, De Sousa’s approach offers a bracing takeaway. The “right way” might not look like a typical studio at all. It might look like friends becoming departments and deliberate sacrifice becoming momentum.
“If people want to follow along, our socials and website are the best place,” De Sousa says. “We’ve got a lot in the pipeline, and we’ll keep sharing progress and updates as consistently as we can.”
Creating a comic, soundtrack, and YouTube multiverse, all connected and built from the ground up, is risky. It’s exhausting. And it’s exactly the kind of launch that can turn a small studio into a fully-fledged universe.
