Our dedicated Technology team can support your business locally, nationally, and internationally.
Spud Gun Studios is scaling a global animation brand through fast-paced content, original IP and a strong focus on human storytelling.
18 June 2026
Ahead of the SPARKies Awards 2026, Aidan Hall and John Talbot spoke with Tom Payne, Co-Founder and Managing Director at Spud Gun Studios, about scaling a global animation brand, testing ideas at speed, and why human storytelling still matters.
With a growing international audience and a move into original long-form content, Spud Gun Studios is emerging as one of the South West’s standout creative tech businesses.
[Image of Tom Payne]
Spud Gun Studios is a Bath-based animation studio producing 2D, narrative-led content for a young adult audience.
We’re the team behind Mashed, a YouTube channel that’s been running for around 14 years. It now has about 7.5 million followers and generated around half a billion views last year.
Mashed was originally owned and funded by Channel 4. We had the opportunity to take control of it about 18 months ago, and Spud Gun Studios was born!
Advertising plays a role, but actually commercial partnerships are really important – and maybe going to be even more so in the future. We’re also moving further into long-form storytelling. We recently launched our first original show, Killer Princess, which is a major step in building our own IP.
A big part of our approach is being both super creative and super-fast with our content generation. We can test ideas quickly as short pieces of content then build on them if they resonate. We have an amazing community who really engage. Some ideas that start small end up evolving into multi-part series with large audiences. We can scale quickly by forming project teams with the right talent wherever they are in the world. Because we both produce and distribute content, we can develop ideas and immediately test them with a global audience.
Creativity and technology are really one and the same in our space. Everything we create is written by humans and produced by humans. When it comes to AI, we don’t use generative tools in our creative work and don’t plan to. Our audience and the brands we work with want stories created by people and produced by people.
Our base is Bath, but we operate on a fully remote basis with our teams based anywhere in the UK and internationally. This means we need strong systems. Where we have found AI super useful is in developing bespoke back office solutions to manage workflows and collaboration. This allows us to stay lean while running multiple productions.
It’s set to be a strong – again! We’ve already booked more revenue since April than we did in the whole of last year, so we’re expecting significant growth.
We’re reinvesting into original content, developing new shows, and working on our first US television project, an eight-part series for a streaming platform.
At the same time, we want to keep the business flexible and continue working with a wide network of creatives rather than building a large in-house team.
When I moved to Bath, I didn’t realise how strong the creative scene was. There’s a really vibrant ecosystem here, and that’s before you tap into the wider animation talent nearby in Bristol.
It’s a great place to build something like this outside of London.
Being part of the SPARKies is a chance to pause, reflect and celebrate. When you’re building a business, you’re always focused on what’s next. It’s so important to recognise how far you’ve come and the achievements of the whole team.
We'll send you relevant insight, events and analysis from our technical, sector and service teams - straight to your inbox.
