Last time we introduced the things we make, now let us introduce the creators behind those things. These four masterminds are the founders of Mohavi and they each have a pretty unique story to tell.
Anthony Vanoostendorp
Anthony was born and raised in Las Vegas and has lived a life full of different experiences which eventually led him to Finland. He provides leadership and likes to make sure things get done, and does some of that art stuff as well.
Starting out in the Mojave Desert, Anthony always thought about owning a company and was willing to try new things. He worked in many different positions, grocery clerk, insurance salesman, construction worker and part-time freelance computer repair.
After meeting his future wife online, Anthony made the huge decision to move to Finland. Moving was the best thing to happen to Anthony and gave way to many new amazing opportunities. Fresh off the plane in Tampere, he started studying International Business at the vocational college Tredu. There he got to dabble in owning a company and was a part of the young entrepreneurs experience. A profitable environmentally friendly company was made and won awards.
Afterwards Anthony worked as a software test engineer and freelancer until applying to study Interactive Media at TAMK. There he learned many new skills, grew as an artist and producer. Aside from his leadership tasks, Anthony likes to mostly tackle anything to do with 3D, such as modeling, rigging and animating. He believes TAMK was a great choice, because he met the other founders and started this amazing company adventure.
Teemu Niskanen
Born and raised for most of his life in the woods of Lempäälä, Teemu is the dude behind these amazing illustrations that you’ve witnessed within this blog and throughout Mohavi’s visuals. He is the guy with the eye for making things look nice.
As a little toddler, Teemu began drawing Donald Duck characters at a very early stage. Some genes were clearly passed down from his grandfather, who spent most of his retirement time painting and sculpting amazing artwork from wood. As time passed by, Teemu also started to expriment with filming and editing what back then seemed amazing (now embarrassing) live sketch videos with his pals in middle school.
After high school graduation, Teemu studied visual arts in a folk high school for a year when finally ending up studying Interactive Media in Tampere University of Sciences. The rest is history.
Teemu has a background in working with several companies in marketing roles, but he believes his career truly started in the Finnish Defence Forces where he was one of the media producers for a military big band, sounds pretty cool right? This was also the place where he discovered the amazing world of DSLR photography.
During his studies in Tampere, Teemu has expanded his digital visual skills to cover graphic and layout design, motion graphics, branding and all the visual aspects related to game design. He also likes to whip out his Canon DSLR and let the camera fire away and edit his photos to perfection.
Severi Jokiperä
From the meadows of Ilmajoki comes the master programmer of the team, Severi. You might not always see him in the frontlines of projects, but when there’s some interaction with the product, his brilliant code is behind there doing the work.
Back in the end of middle school, Severi still didn’t really know where to venture forward with his life, so choosing his next school was nearly impossible. That was until his brother, a first year student in Tampere University of Applied Sciences, started boasting how much fun making games is. That was the moment when the path became a bit clearer.
Severi decided to go to vocational school to learn how to make games. That is where he fell in love with programming and he hasn’t stopped doing it ever since. During his time at the school he was the head of the student council, made his first customer project, got to the finals in a game making competition and even ended up teaching game making in a summer course.
But Severi wasn’t stopping there. Following his brother’s footsteps he moved to Tampere to also study game development in Tampere University of Applied Sciences. And that was finally the place where he met the rest of the team.
Severi is professional in using Unity-game engine and C# in his work, but that doesn’t limit him to only making games. He also knows his way around Android Studio, JavaScript and a bit of PHP and Python, and keeps learning and expanding his knowledge to other programming platforms and languages.
Pauli Ondruska
This jolly bearded guy from Tampere is the audio lead of our amazing team. His name is Pauli and he’s Mohavi’s sound guru and he takes good care of our audio productions. In his free time, he likes to create sounds and music that tests the limits of our imagination.
Pauli has a great knowledge of the music and audio industry. He started to learn music early on by making his own songs while collaborating with other talented composers and musicians. When he was young, he used to do his own radio shows with his friends and he loved to do voice-overs for different animations.
Pauli truly started to pursue his dreams as an audio professional when he went to study composition and music technology at Kuopio’s conservatory of music and arts. After 4 years of studying Pauli went to increase his knowledge about music production and sound design to Tampere University of Applied Sciences.
During his studies in Kuopio and Tampere, he has also worked as a freelance sound designer and composer for the local TV stations, various indie game companies, and award-winning films. He has experienced what it means to create studio sessions for live orchestra sessions, live concerts or voice-overs. He knows how to improve video games with awesome sound design.
Pauli is professional in using many digital audio stations for his audio works. He knows how to use industry-standard tools in the video game industry, such as FMOD and Wwise. He also knows how to use the Unity-game engine and C#. Overall, he’s one qualified guy to ensure that your products have quality audio.
But That’s Not All!
As you can see, the skills of these four dudes complement each other beautifully. Once the trust was built and the projects started piling up, starting a company seemed like a no-brainer.
In addition to these four, Mohavi has other skillful freelancers available to support our services. They are just as paramount to completing projects. Make sure to give them a follow if they possibly happen to also help on your project!
Did any of these super humans pique your interest? Visit our About us page to find our contact information, or just hit us up if you’re ready to start your new project with us.
Until next time! 😎