Melon Dezign

Melon Dezign was an Amiga demoscene 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, Mikael and Benjamin in Norway 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. 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. 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).

A second game on Amiga is produced by Melon Dezign, Jimmy's Fantastic Journey, distributed in 1995 by Lionheart Software Design, programmed by Christian Hessenbruch, with graphics by Henrik Lund Mikkelsen and Christophe Branche (aka Walt, from the French division), an original soundtrack composed by Raphaël Gesqua (aka Audiomonster, also from the French division), and sound effects by David A. Filskov and Sune M. Pedersen.

In 2000, the French division produced the music video for the song "Come Together" on the occasion of the launch of the website of the British group The Beatles and the release of the compilation disc 1.

After his stint in demoscene, Gesqua began in 1991 a career as a composer and sound designer for video games (Flashback, Snow Bros, Mr Nutz, Fade to Black, Moto Racer, Shaq Fu ...), then also for the film industry (Livid, Among the Living, The Red Spider, The Deep House ...)