Toby Hyder

A studio built on capture

Toby Hyder is a British filmmaker and creative technologist who founded XO Link, a studio for AI-enhanced filmmaking^[7][1]. AI Film Festival Japan describes a background in advanced technologies and narrative storytelling, and an interest in how new tools can support traditional film craft, ethical AI, global collaboration and tools for independent creators^[7]. His public filmography begins in 2025; his earlier career and education are not in the sources this page uses.

What sets his work apart is the order he works in. Before generating a frame, he goes out and captures the real thing: an actor scanned in a photogrammetry rig, ancient trees photographed bark by bark, real archers drawing real bows in real weather^[2]. XO Link sells that as identity capture, and his films credit it as such^[3][11].

What separates good from exceptional work is the data you feed it.

Toby Hyder^[2]

Bones of Yew

Bones of Yew is a ten-minute short set in the Hundred Years' War, told through a pagan peasant archer whose bond with the land and an ancient yew stands against the rising tide of faith and war^[3]. It builds to the Battle of Crécy in 1346, with the English outnumbered four to one and the peasant bowmen deciding the day, and its on-screen text closes on the longbow becoming law^[3][13]. He is credited as director, producer and "generator", and as data capture lead^[3].

The data came first. He and his team documented the ancient yew forests of England, built a high-resolution dataset of bark, branch and canopy, and trained custom LoRAs on it; the same yew-trained model shaped the deer at the end of the film, antlers and all^[2]. Actor Matt "Silverback-Tarzan" Lewis was scanned in one session by Visualskies at its Battersea studio, in three costumes from the National Theatre archive, and LoRAs trained on that scan kept his likeness while ageing him across the film^[2][4]. The Longbow Heritage Society gave real archery to capture, and weapons master Carol coached the team, lent the bows and fletched a bespoke arrow that appears on screen^[2][3].

Visualskies counts a 16-person team, including two archery trainers^[4]. Jordan Hudson wrote the score, with violin by Tchi-Ann Liu and "La Vergues Astrea" by Bill Vine, sung by Paulin Bündgen; John Bird co-edited, shot the data capture and did the sound design and colour^[3][26]. The generation stack credited on the film runs from ChatGPT, Luma Photon and Google Imagen 3 through Runway, Kling and Veo 2 to Magnific and Topaz Labs^[3].

In that moment, AI doesn't invent. It reflects.

Toby Hyder^[2]

Released on 11 June 2025, Bones of Yew is his most watched upload, with more than 35,000 YouTube views^[3]. A second edition, regenerated and remastered in 4K "now that AI has improved", followed on 16 November 2025, with a making-of narrated over NotebookLM slides the next day^[13][14].

Cannes, Tokyo and London

On 22 May 2025, during the Cannes Film Festival, Bones of Yew was honoured with an AI Films Award at the Beach Ball Gala Dinner and Awards at the Majestic Beach Club^[5]. His own trailers and the festival bios that followed describe that as Best Short or the top prize at the Cannes AI Film Festival, and also mention a Moonshot Award in London; no official list for those has been found, so this page reports them as claims^[7][4][32]. Bones of Yew was also a nominee for Best AI Enhanced Performance at the 2025 AI CINE Awards^[25].

In November 2025 he flew to Tokyo as a special guest of AI Film Festival Japan, where the 4K remaster of Bones of Yew opened the festival as its world premiere, with a live Q&A and a special lecture on 3 November^[7][9][8]. Asked what the technology meant to him, he said it had made the impossible possible^[8].

Back in London, Bones of Yew won Best Pilot at Season 1 of the Bionic Awards, whose final was held on 5 March 2026; it was also a finalist for Best Short Film^[6]. Bionic's own school page refers to it as a Bionic Award winner^[28].

Awake, Son of Assyria

Bones of Yew travelled further than festivals. Mousa Issa, chairman of the Swedish club Assyriska FF, saw it during an online lecture and decided the club's long-held idea of an AI film was now possible; the club signed an agreement with Toby in September 2025^[10]. The result, Awake, Son of Assyria, premiered on 8 February 2026^[11]. It travelled furthest through the club itself: Assyriska FF's own upload has nearly 4,000 views, about 31 times his own^[40][11].

Inspired by the words of the poet Naum Faiq, it follows the Assyrian story from the great cities of the ancient world to the modern football pitch^[11]. Using XO Link's subject-scanning and identity-capture process, the entire squad was digitally captured and placed into one shared AI environment, so the same people move between ancient Assyria and today's arena^[11].

The technology is not used to recreate history, but to connect it.

Toby Hyder^[11]

Bang Bang, for Paul Oakenfold

In April 2026 he went somewhere else entirely. Bang Bang, Paul Oakenfold's official music video on Perfecto Records, is "An Occult Mechanica Story": the year 2126, the techno-state of Alt Albion, where occult practice now guides technology, and two contractors whose mission spirals into possession across the wastelands of Welles and the megastructures of New London^[12]. Directed by Toby and produced by XO Link, it is the most watched film of his career, with nearly 46,000 views on Oakenfold's channel^[12]. He posted a 3:02 edit and the extended film on his own channel too^[34].

When Bang Bang closed AI LIVE Episode 121, host Chris Branch called the song a banger with visuals, editing and pacing to match, and noted that Bionic Awards organiser Alex Pell was recording a podcast interview with Toby at that very moment^[19].

Agents as crew, and the Combat of the Thirty

His next medieval subject is the Combat of the Thirty, the 1351 fight between thirty knights a side in Brittany. While planning it he made a three-part tutorial series with Invideo's AI agents, using Agent One Pro as a continuity script supervisor and Agent Two as a second-unit director generating coverage^[16][18][17]. His verdict was candid: about a fifth of the agent's coverage was usable, and having the tool without control felt like "having a Ferrari but only driving 5mph"^[17].

For Lost Canon, a short film series from Moonmax and CapCut with Raindance Film Festival, he made What Chivalry is This?, which looks at the ritual of faking injury through a medieval lens, in CapCut Video Studio^[15].

On the circuit

At Shake Film Festival a hundred filmmakers each made a one-minute Love Letter to Cinema in a single day; his, number 03 of 100, is Cinema Is Fun, a childhood memory of seeing Men in Black in his own voiceover^[24][21]. When AI LIVE showed it in Episode 135 alongside films by Stéphane Benini and Uncanny Harry, with Afro Futcha also at the festival, it took straight 1s from the chat^[21].

He has become a familiar face on the London scene. On 10 September 2026 he shared the bill at the Bionic Awards evening "A New Era Begins" with Chris Branch and Salma Aboukar, a night Alex Pell trailed on AI LIVE as covering everything up to how to make the perfect battle scene^[27][20]. He also posts every project to TikTok as @xo.link, where his 31 posts have drawn more than 39,000 views, led by a first glimpse of Bones of Yew^[38][39]. By late October 2026 he was back in Japan, and Chris named him on the show among the creators building 3D scenes to drive video generation^[22].