XAVIER MILLER
LIGHTER & NUKE COMPOSITOR
The Development of
WHERE IT STARTED
Primordial Bloodlines started with my love for storytelling, animation, and the worlds that stayed with me long after the credits ended.
I grew up in Deerfield Beach, Florida, and later spent nine years serving in the U.S. Army before pursuing filmmaking, visual effects, and animation. My path into this industry wasn't traditional, but every chapter of that journey shaped the kind of storyteller I wanted to become.
I've always loved anime, especially stories that build massive worlds while never losing sight of their characters. Attack on Titan showed me how mystery, history, war, and sacrifice could make a fictional world feel incredibly real. Later, Arcane showed me how animation could be visually breathtaking while still grounding everything in complicated relationships, family, and deeply human emotions.
Those stories made me think about what I wanted to say through animation. I didn't want to recreate what inspired me. I wanted to take the emotions and questions that stayed with me and build something of my own.
That journey became Primordial Bloodlines, a world I am still writing, designing, developing, and now beginning to bring to life through my first animated short film
THE IDEA
The earliest idea behind Primordial Bloodlines wasn't a war, a power system, or an entire fictional world.
It was two siblings.
I became fascinated by the bond between twins and started asking what could possibly separate two people who had spent their entire lives together. What if they were torn apart as children? What if they grew up believing they had lost each other? And what if, years later, they met again on opposite sides of the same conflict?
That idea became Ryker and Ryla, and their relationship became the foundation for everything I built around them.
Their pendants became a symbol of that bond, connecting them to the family and childhood they once shared, even after the world pulls them apart.
THE HEART OF THE STORY
Arcane
At its core, Primordial Bloodlines is a story about family, identity, and how our experiences shape the people we become.
Ryker and Ryla begin their lives together, but after being separated, they grow up in completely different worlds. They experience different losses, form different relationships, and are taught different versions of the same history.
I wanted to explore whether the bond they shared as children could survive everything that happened to them after they were torn apart.
For me, that became the heart of Primordial Bloodlines.
Are we still family when the world makes us enemies?
Attack on Titan
TEAM & DEPARTMENT COORDINATION
BUILDING THE WORLD
Early Concepts
Once I understood Ryker and Ryla's story, I started asking what kind of world could create the circumstances that would tear them apart.
That question pushed Primordial Bloodlines beyond the twins. I began developing different cultures, histories, conflicts, environments, technologies, and systems of power that could shape the people living within this world.
As the world grew, I wanted every element to feel connected. The history needed to influence the present. The conflicts needed to affect the characters. Even the powers and technology needed to feel like they belonged to the same world.
What started as the story of two siblings slowly became a much larger world with generations of history behind it.
Attack on Titan
BUILDING THE STORY
Once the world began to take shape, the next challenge was figuring out how to tell the story within it.
I started breaking down the journeys of Ryker and Ryla, exploring how their lives would change after being separated and how the choices they make would eventually bring them back toward one another.
As I continued writing, the story grew beyond their individual journeys. I began developing the conflicts, relationships, turning points, and mysteries that would carry the story forward while always keeping the twins at its emotional center.
This process went through countless changes. Ideas were rewritten, characters evolved, and entire storylines changed as I learned more about the world and the story I wanted to tell.
BUILDING THE PITCH
As Primordial Bloodlines continued to grow, I realized that developing the project was only part of the challenge. I also had to learn how to communicate the vision.
Building the pitch became an ongoing process of taking years of ideas, characters, worldbuilding, and story and finding the clearest and most engaging way to present them.
With every version of the deck, I learned what information was essential, what could be simplified, and what was better left for the audience to discover.
The pitch continues to evolve alongside the project, becoming clearer as I become more confident in the story I want to tell.
