“The Alchemy of a Storm” is in full speed: 485 people have already joined our Discord server to be a part of our short animation film (and you can too!).

Today, I want to look back and write about the movie before the movie. How it all started. The pre-pre-pre-pre-pre-production. Buckle up!

How it all began

Every edition of the main event has a theme and a poster created by an artist that is meaningful to THU’s story and legacy. The theme always relates to what THU, the industry, and the Tribe are going through, and once it’s defined, the artist is briefed to come up with a visual piece that represents that feeling.

I usually create a handful of theme options and bring them to @Andre Luis (CEO of THU). But this year, I came in with one. I was pretty set on “The Alchemy of a Storm”, and André was instantly on board. We really wanted this edition to celebrate the chaos of creating and how much courage it takes to be an artist right now, nurturing and protecting your craft.

After deciding on the theme and writing the manifesto (that you can read here), it was time to brief the incredible @Katsuya Terada. He came up with a striking artwork that personified the message of the manifesto into a badass sci-fi hero of epic proportions. And so Lavina was born.

Creating the story: the birth of Lavina

At this point, @Delcio Gomes and I had already been talking for a few months about bringing the poster to life in a movie, as we did for Everlasting. When we got the final version of the poster from Terada, we did a deep dive into the manifesto and tried to develop Lavina (the name we gave to the woman on the artwork) as the main character for this movie. What’s her story? Why is her arm broken? What’s her mission? What happened to her horn? We studied the image with obsessive attention to detail, asking every question and trying to come up with answers. Through all the questions and ideas, one word kept coming back: resilience. She represents the resilience of artists who protect their work and preserve the soul and human side of art. The word “resilience” continues to be a guiding light in this process, even now.

Turning the story into a script

After we had a clear idea of the character's motivations and the message of the movie, it was time to start developing the script. We invited @Elena Samia, a fellow writer, to join our meetings and bring her unique vision to this story as we developed the script with Délcio under the careful eye of our day-one producer, @Fernanda Nevitiv da Costa.

The script went through many versions and, even now, it's still a living, breathing thing (I’m actually convinced it has a life of its own). The core message hasn’t changed, but everything else did. Writing is usually a lonely endeavor for me, so it was great to do it collaboratively and in conversation, for a change. It gave me a different kind of joy in the work I hadn't felt before.

When we were working on the dialogues, I was also lucky to have the support of Rebekah Hartwig, Luna McKee, Daniel Smith, and our actress Kika Magalhães. We’d read lines out loud and dissect how natural they sounded. We were all in different time zones, and it was often 3 am for me, but those were some of my favorite moments of the whole process.

Holy sh*t, it’s getting real

It’s been six months since the journey began, and it still feels surreal to me. A theme and manifesto I wrote became a poster by an extraordinary artist, which became a story, which is now becoming a film. And I get to watch all these talented creators from all over the world pouring themselves into it just for the sake of creating something together.

I just got back from an intense week of mocap shooting for the movie (more about it soon!), and after countless hours of online meetings, we were finally not rectangles in video calls or “anonymous alligators” on a shared Google Doc. We were real people in a real studio doing a real movie. I think this was the moment where it really clicked that all it takes for an idea to become a thing is a bunch of cool people who really believe in it. And we are lucky to have found them.

The movie will premiere at THU Main Event 2026, and it can’t come fast enough. It will be the moment where our passion for the craft (and collective madness) finally hits a screen and becomes real for everyone.