Los Angeles-based animation and gaming studio Saffronic has appointed Bhanu Prakash as the head of creative – games. The announcement was made by Saffronic CEO Skyler Mattson.
Throughout his career in the digital arts spanning over 18 years across gaming, VR, film, animation, and computer graphics, Bhanu has collaborated on projects with industry giants in gaming and entertainment, including most recently serving as head of creative operations for over nine years at Technicolor Games. He has also held senior positions at Electronic Arts, MPC Film, and DQ Entertainment. Bhanu has contributed to multiple chart-topping consoles and mobile games, Hollywood blockbusters, and animated series, including Call of Duty, FIFA, Assassin’s Creed, Asphalt 9, GTA5, Gotham Knights, NFS, Jungle Book, Guardians of the Galaxy, Cinderella, Godzilla, Game of Thrones, and Disney’s Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.
Founded in 2022 by Tim Sarnoff, former deputy CEO and president production services at Technicolor, and Vince Pizzica, former Technicolor CTO and chief strategist, Saffronic‘s growing management team also includes CEO Skyler Mattson; COO Sally Toms; joint studio directors Kumar Chandrasekaran and Prabhakar Sambandan; executive creative director Kevin J. Johnson and SVP of business development Kristy Scanlan.
“Gaming continues to grow exponentially and is anticipated to double by 2030 reaching close to US$600 billion,” stated Mattson. “With Bhanu’s exceptional background and artistic skill, he is the ideal creative executive to lead Saffronic’s global growth in the gaming space.”
“As head of creative for games at Saffronic, I intend to bring my unwavering commitment to excellence to help guide and empower the creative minds in the gaming division to deliver truly outstanding product for our clients,” commented Prakash. “I look forward to working with Kumar, Kevin, Sally and the entire creative team to help build Saffronic into a market leader in games development and production.”
As head of creative – games, Bhanu is responsible for leading a creative team to deliver content to a global clientele. His leadership extends to spearheading advanced technology integration, shaping creative direction, fostering client relationships, overseeing training initiatives, conducting vendor assessments, and orchestrating public relations efforts. Prakash will oversee creative for all locations of Saffronic’s games business in India and will jointly report to studio director Chandrasekaran and executive creative director Kevin J. Johnson.
Since the studio’s launch, Saffronic has established itself in the entertainment space with clients, including DreamWorks Animation (Gabby’s Dollhouse, Dragons: The Nine Realms, Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous), WildBrain, and Trioscope. The appointment of Bhanu, with his background in gaming, is significant for Saffronic as the company will soon commence production on three AAA titles for leading game publishers.
Saffronic’s creative services include creating concept art, modelling, texturing, rigging, animation (keyframe and motion-capture clean-up), VFX and full cinematics; and the group can work in Unreal, Unity and client proprietary engines.