About Creative Bandit Studios — AI Narrative Filmmaking

AI looks amazing. But can it tell a story?

Creative Bandit Studios is an independent filmmaking project created by Oxford-based filmmaker and video editor Alex Howell, making original narrative films and animation with generative AI alongside traditional filmmaking, editing, writing and sound design.

It exists for a fairly simple reason: I have more stories I want to tell than I have money, crew or hours in the day to make them.

So I use generative AI alongside traditional filmmaking tools to bridge that gap — and to find out whether this technology can move past impressive individual shots and become a genuine storytelling medium.

In short: human-led storytelling, enhanced by AI. I lead the story; the tools help make it real.

Making Ideas Real

Creative Bandit Studios is a place for turning ideas into something you can actually watch.

That might mean an animated short, an experimental film, a piece of previsualisation, a mock documentary, or something that doesn't fit neatly into any of those boxes.

My work ranges from the self-aware anime comedy of Isekai no Meta to the alternative-history world of Great Beast Albion, alongside experiments, concepts and smaller productions.

The common thread is simply that they're stories I wanted to see — so I decided to make them.

Why AI?

I'm not a large studio.

I don't have an animation department, a VFX team or a blockbuster budget. What I do have is access to a rapidly developing generation of creative tools that allows an independent filmmaker to attempt things that would previously have been well beyond their resources.

I use AI as part of a wider filmmaking process involving writing, directing, editing, sound, music, compositing and plenty of trial and error. I've written up that whole process in my AI filmmaking workflow guide.

The technology isn't the reason for making the film.

It's what helps make the film possible.

Creative Bandit Studios

This is still a small operation, and that's part of the point.

Creative Bandit Studios is somewhere I can tell stories, learn, improve and — most importantly — actually finish things.

Some projects are polished productions. Some are rougher around the edges. Some are proof that an idea that existed only in my head can now exist on a screen.

And I'm interested in seeing just how far that can go.

Telling stories. Failing. Learning. Making them anyway.