Team | noddingheadsgames

The team at Nasscom 2017, L to R: Paras, Avichal, Shruti, Ian and Anirudh

Ian Maude

CO-FOUNDER & ART DIRECTOR

Known affectionately within the team as “Grandpa”, with over two decades of experience. Ian gained a job as a junior 3D artist with the highly acclaimed Stainless Software (creators of Carmageddon), shortly after graduating from the University of Teesside where he obtained a BA (Hons) degree in Graphic Design & Illustration.

In the years preceding, Ian worked for some of the widely known companies in the video games industry. Some of which include Rockstar, Ubisoft, The Chinese Room and Acclaim, but to name a few. He rose through the ranks becoming a Senior, Lead Artist and most notably an Art Director for The Chinese Room where he oversaw the prototype development for “Everyone’s Gone to the Rapture”, which went on to win 3 Bafta awards.

Ian later become a lecturer in video game art at a Pune institute where he met Shruti Ghosh and Avichal Singh who would later team up, and ultimately created Nodding Heads Games.

Shruti Ghosh
CO-FOUNDER & ART DIRECTOR

Attained a 1st Class degree in Fine Art from Rabindra Bharati University. She specialises in hand painting and this can be clearly seen in the game’s artstyle. Shruti comes with over a decade of game dev experience having working on titles such as Burn Out Open World & Dominator, VC Arts - Fantastic Four etc and working as Art Manager for EA Games India for titles - Bejeweled Blitz, Monopoly Slots and Tetris Blitz.

Shruti is also an honoree of the Bafta Breakthrough India 2021

Avichal Singh

CO-FOUNDER, GAME DESIGNER & PROJECT MANAGER

Holds a Masters Degree in Game Design and Project Management. Graduating with the top project at his college and participant of 12 game jams, Avichal joined Zynga, where he worked on IPs like Farmville and Empires and Allies.

While at Zynga, he designed the top-selling asset for FarmVille. His asset for Cecil, the South African lion infamously gunned down by an American recreational hunter in 2015, touched the hearts of the farmville audiences. While this was a great sentimental asset it also brought $25,000 revenue to the game in just a week. Which is uncalled for one single asset, in the 8 year history of Farmville.

Avichal also worked on 200+ levels for Empires and Allies, along with veteran Game Designers Jeffrey Sondin from the San Francisco Zynga team.

Avichal’s passion for indie game development saw his exit from Zynga, with an early game concept of Raji. Soon after pitching it to Ian and Shruti, not long after they would form Nodding Heads Games. The rest, as they say, is history.

Paras Chaudhary
LEAD PROGRAMMER

Paras comes from 8 years of academic background in computer science, which includes a masters in video game programming and project management. Right at the beginning of his professional career in 2014, he started working with the then newly released Unreal Engine 4. He is credited with shipping one of the earliest titles developed in UE4. He specializes in gameplay programming, however bending and breaking features of UE4 is something he continues to practice. Game jams and competitions give him a thrill, having won a few of them organized by the likes of Square Enix and Nasscom. From a very young age, when playing a game, he has found analyzing and dissecting its mechanics to be more enjoyable than doing a conventional playthrough. He likes the company of dogs more than humans.

Dipam Bora

PROGRAMMER

He was very curious about how games were made when he was a child, and would endeavour to analyse games like Mario and Pac-man to name a few.

After obtaining his Bachelor Degree in Computer Science, he went on to a Post-Graduation Degree in Game Development. During his time at college he launched his first social photo sharing and blogging website, he also made his first text based fortune teller game.

Himanshu Thakur

Animator

With keen eye for fluid and intricate motion, he has been producing animations at the studio for past four years. He is always open to learning new techniques and loves to work alongside the team, breathing life and personality to characters.

Jalay Bhatti
TECH ARTIST

Jalay Bhatti is enthusiastic, hard working and a team player. He is a self taught video game environment artist. In his professional experience He has worked on both Video games and CG animated trailers. He is an amateur 3d photo scanning enthusiast and likes to research and experiment on new techniques for faster and more optimized workflow for better results. Creating a 3d living, breathing world with lush foliage is his passion.

Shreyash Pai
3D ARTIST

Coming from a small town on the coast of Konkan, India, Shreyash is a 3D Environment Artist who falls under the category of nocturnal species. He holds a Masters Degree in Video Game Art from DSK International Campus finishing graduation acquiring a top spot in his final year project, FOLD. He met Ian and Shruti at the campus as his teachers while pursuing his degree. His passion and love for creating art for video games and his wish to work with his teachers resulted in him earning a position at Nodding Heads Games.

He specializes in 3D Modeling and Texturing and has a habit of visualizing wireframes on everything around him. He has worked on Ubisoft's Steep for 2 years. After which he has been working with the Nodding Heads team since 2018 on their multi-award winning title Raji An Ancient Epic.

Shreyash is known to have an acquired skill of working 2 days straight but also a natural talent to sleep for 20+ hours resulting in his nickname Sleepyzombie. Hates all sources of light and has coffee for blood. When not working, he enjoys pestering his dog and playing his guitar.

Himanshu Thakur
ANIMATOR

Anirudh Singh
Concept Artist

Hailing from Jaipur, India. Anirudh is inspired heavily by Indian Myths, legends and Architecture which are often incorporated in his artwork. He believes India holds so much of culture and stories which need to be shared with the rest of the world and working on Raji became the perfect opportunity for him to do so.

Being extremely passionate about Art and Design Anirudh has designed characters, environments, illustrations for clients such as - Friday Filmworks, Mercedes, Sony Yay, MTV Indies, Green Gold Animation Ekabhuya Films.

Apart from Art, Anirudh is a big fan of Heavy Metal Music and Mixed Martial Arts.

David Chung

CONCEPT ARTIST