Tom Paton
English genre director and producer who, as head of Pigeon Shrine and AiMation Studios, wrote and directed the AI-animated feature Where the Robots Grow (2024).
- Credits
- 1
- Active since
- 2024
Image: forbes.com
- Nature
- Human
- Department
- Directing
- Writing, Producing
- Based in
- West Midlands
- Active since
- 2024
- 1 credit
Biography
Tom Paton is an English director, writer and producer who began as a self-taught maker of low-budget genre films. His credits include Pandorica (2016), Black Site (2018), which premiered at FrightFest, Black Ops (2019), G-Loc (2020), 400 Bullets (2021), Assailant (2022) and Us or Them (2023). A SXSW London bio says he has directed and produced more than 11 features as well as TV, commercials and music videos.
As CEO of Pigeon Shrine he told a FrightFest panel in 2023 that the company offered an alternative to the major studios. He described its "synth-assisted" method: an AI visualisation stage and AI-driven virtual production, with VFX done first, actors joining late and several films made at once, using tools he said were trained on material the company holds rights to. In July 2024 Pigeon Shrine launched AiMation Studios around a method it calls aiMation, including a voice technique called VoCap.
Paton wrote, directed and produced its first release, Where the Robots Grow, about a farming robot, Cru, who finds the last human baby on a planet called Oracle. Plex dates it 17 October 2024, and it was released free on YouTube. ElevenLabs says nine people made it in 90 days, using its tools for voices and sound effects; Fast Company Brasil puts the cost at about $8,000 a minute, roughly $700,000 in all, and Habr names Adobe Firefly and Stable Diffusion among the tools.
Now billed as founder and CEO of AiMation, he launched Non Player Combat, a four-part AI-generated reality series, on YouTube and AiMation's app in December 2025. At the 2025 Stockholm AI Film Conference he said its platform aimed to release a new episode or film every day by 2026.