Melon Dezign

Melon Dezign was an Amiga demo group founded in Denmark on October 21, 1991 by Seen (Henrik Lund Mikkelsen) and Paleface (Jacob Gorm Hansen). Originally, they were a subgroup of Crystal, where they at first exclusively created intros for cracked games. Shortly after the formation, they were joined by Bannasoft (Johan Kjeldgaard-Petersen), and after helping organise The Party, a demo event with more than 1200 attendees, several other members joined, including Walt, Mack, Performer, Audiomonster in France, and Mark Knight otherwise known as TDK in the UK.

Melon Dezign's logo

The group was notable in the scene for their focus on design, this meant seamless transitions and less focus on impressive algorithms, although several of their productions gained high placings in competitions. Often, a Melon Dezign intro would feature a simple vector-based graphic (such as their logo) on a bichrome background, where other scene groups at the time would have their vector graphics inside a window or as the only thing on screen^{[citation needed]}. Their recognizable logo was also a recurring factor in their productions, where other groups often featured several different, even within the same production.

Paleface and Seen produced the game Naughty Ones which was released in 1994 by Interactivision. Ironically, the AGA version of Naughty Ones was cracked by Crystal (though released under the Paradox label; the OCS version was cracked by a group called Kingdom).

Awards

Amiga demos

• Eastern Conference (1992), 1st place, Humantarget [1]
• Assembly demo party (1993), 3rd place, Romantic Demo [2]
• The Computer Crossroad party (1993), 3rd place, How to Skin a Cat [3]
• Kindergarten (1995), 2nd place, Melkedemo [4]
• Somewhere In Holland (1995), 1st place, "Planet M." [5]
• Somewhere In Holland (1995), 2nd place, "Baygon" [6]

PC demos

• The Gathering (1996), 2nd place, Ninja 2 [7]
• The Party (1997), 1st place, Tribes [8]

After the demoscene

The French part of the group (Walt and Alex) is now a web design company, specialising in Flash animation for commercial gain. The Danish members have been involved in various web and games projects, such as the Hitman games from IO Interactive. TDK, having worked for Mindscape International, Bullfrog Productions, Electronic Arts, and Visual Science is currently working for Codemasters.

External links

• Melon Dezign's homepage
• Melon Dezign web design, founded by Walt and Alex
• Index of demoscene productions on Pouet
• TDK's personal site
• TDK's game music site