Award-winning filmmaker Bob Gaudette and TV producer and creative director Kirk Hipkiss have launched new Toronto-based, AI-native film studio, Nolia Studios, positioned at the intersection of independent filmmaking, studio-grade production, and next-gen creative technology.
The studio launch builds on the success of Gaudette’s short film, A Face Only a Mother Could Love, which earned the $50,000 Grand Prix at the 2026 Runway AI Festival, Best Picture at the OMNI International Film Festival in Australia, Best AI Film at the New York International Film Awards, and the David Harold Blackwell Award for AI & Emerging Technology Film at The Eudaimonia Project Film Festival. It was also a finalist at the 2026 Reply AI Film Festival in Venice.
Building on that momentum, Gaudette and Hipkiss are establishing Nolia Studios “as a dedicated, slate-driven production company focused on original intellectual property across film, television, and emerging formats.” Their creative partnership that has been developing over the past year through AI-driven film and broadcast projects, with Hipkiss also the founder of Toronto’s Radical Point Media, an established animation, visual effects, motion graphics, and generative AI studio focused on CG and AI-driven production work.
Hipkiss said what stood out to him immediately in Gaudette’s eight-minute short “was not the technology, but the storytelling.”
“Bob has a rare instinct for character and emotional clarity, and Nolia is designed to turn that creative strength into a sustainable studio model,” said Hipkiss, a veteran producer who has been behind numerous seasons of factual television series like Selling New York and Big City Broker.
Nolia Studios is currently developing a slate of original projects spanning short-form, feature, and serialized content, including the animated, The Little Cloud Thief, for both feature and episodic adaptation, in addition to an AI-driven animated feature in collaboration with a UK- and Toronto-based production partner.
“AI offers new pathways into filmmaking, enabling more people to take part in the creative process,” said Gaudette. “Nolia is built around the idea that powerful stories can come from anywhere, and that the tools now exist to realize them at a high level at reduced budgets.”
