Spotlight: Madhava Kinnicutt, Evelyn Dale (Thiefish)
September 17, 2026
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Filmmaker Spotlight
Thiefish
Madhava Kinnicutt, Evelyn Dale · USA · 6 min
What led you to creating Thiefish?
Madhava and I (Evelyn) knew that we wanted to direct a film together our final year at SCAD. Thiefish began as a story of two middle-aged sailors reuniting in a romantically-charged battle, then evolved into a story of choosing love over familial ties. We wrote the script, chatted with some of our classmates, and realized it required too much time to be interesting. This was in 2025 and the whole AI scene had really started to take off. Madhava and I were discussing the story and the current state of the world over dinner one night when we got onto talking about the negative environmental impact of AI. It was infuriating, watching it all happen around us, and we felt like there had to be something we could do. Both of us grew up with wild stories about magic and nature that we felt weren’t as common nowadays. We wanted to infuse some sort of magic into our own story, too – which led to the fish spirit. We also needed some sort of resource to be abused, so we decided to explore a light source that wasn’t electricity or fire, but was instead from the fish itself. Thiefish became a journey of returning an abused force of nature to the wild in spite of whatever technological advancement was improving their daily lives. This became an outlet for Madhava, the team, and I to express our hatred of AI and hopefully put a message out there that would make people question : should we really be ruining our world in return for making our own lives easier?
Thiefish is, at its heart, a fight against AI. We structured the story, concept, and even our creation mediums so the process would be a love letter to human creation.
What were some inspirations going into the creative process?
As we fleshed out the narrative style, we knew that time was of essence considering how ambitious the concept was. This led us to a more fast paced, exciting type of story where the events ramped up quickly enough that we could really rest in the dramatic moments. Thus, the main chase pulls heavily from adventure movies like Pirates of the Caribbean and Sinbad, Legend of the Seven Seas. Our subtler, more emotional beats pulled heavy inspiration from The Prince of Egypt, especially in the way we handled the initial exposition of the Seakeepers capture.
The art direction pulled heavily from painterly visdev artists we look up to. Most notable was Kleiner Hai, a chinese environment designer whose work employs brilliant saturated tones and a confident eye for contrast and implied detail.
Animation wise we pulled from classic 2D Dreamworks films for the character acting and the lighting. The action sequences and 2D FX contain a lot more Japanese influence to create a more dynamic feel.
Tell us what you hope the audience gets from Thiefish and why is a story like this important to tell?
Thiefish is, at its heart, a fight against AI. We structured the story, concept, and even our creation mediums so the process would be a love letter to human creation. All of us on the team hope that the audience will take the grandeur of the Seakeeper – the fish spirit – and lead them to ponder what natural wonders we’re currently losing to the advancement of AI. Water is a resource that grows increasingly in danger as data centers are put up and approved against the will of the people. We focused on water a lot in our film – which not an easy thing to animate. We used 2D animation, which needs to be entirely done by the human hand at every step of the pipeline. We even explored traditional mediums of colored pencil on paper for two shots of our film to bring our message home to the traditional root of artistry. Thiefish was a film that we pushed every aspect of to be the best that our team could do, and we all had fun in the process. We hope anyone who watches our film can see the fun and hard work we put into its creation. We hope they’ll be inspired to create through their own hard work and not through the click of a button. In our current world, stories where normal people make a large difference are extremely important. Our two main characters, Ashni and Arlo, are normal – a thief and a fisherman, respectively. However, it is through their willpower to do something right that they return the Seakeeper to the ocean. The city will no longer have fish magic to light their lamps with, but the ocean would be much better off with its protector. We believe that stories like this that inspire the everyday person will be able to show that any little thing you can do in your daily life – educating your family and friends on the negative impacts of AI, choosing to ask a teacher or friend instead of just plugging your question into a computer, reading a book and contributing to libraries – makes a difference. The more people that choose to do the right thing against whatever ease it might bring them, the better our world will be.
How did you become a filmmaker?
For both of us, storytelling has always been intrinsic. We both grew up reading fantasy, drawing, and spending time outdoors. Our time at SCAD showed us how many of these interests aligned – so when capstone rolled around, we knew we wanted to create something together.
Evelyn :
I’ve only been making films for two years, but I’ve been a storyteller for as long as I can remember. I grew up reading so much and sitting during a lot of long car rides just imagining my own stories visually in my head. I loved creating worlds, characters, magic systems, and drawing all of it out – but it was only in my freshman year at SCAD that I met Madhava and he told me that what I wanted to do was an actual major. I soon switched over and found that I loved storyboarding and all kinds of concept art. I directed a film my junior year called “Cosmos Cuisine” that Madhava and a lot of our Thiefish team was also on. This was my first official foray into filmmaking. While it was fast paced and a lot of work, I had a ton of fun and had even more fun working with our team to make Thiefish the best it could be.
Madhava :
For me my filmmaking journey really started in my junior year of highschool when my friend and I first started animating and making animatics together. At the time, we would use songs we liked and tailor the stories to the musical messages and beats. During our senior year we created a full short film to a song in this way. After this, I would like to think that I became less reliant on premade music for my story telling. It is interesting how this impacted the way that we approached music for this film. We started the composition process super early and I would like to think that this was in part due to my history working with music for earlier projects.
| Film | Thiefish |
|---|---|
| Director | Madhava Kinnicutt, Evelyn Dale |
| Section | Animated Shorts |
| Shorts Program | Whimsy & Wonder |
| Runtime | 6 min |
| Screening | Fri 25 Sep, 5:15 pm |
