Interview with Seen

"Genious designer", "arrogant idiot", and "very funny" is just a little amount of the statements you can get about this colourful Danish founder of Melon Dezign. We FOCUS on SEEN / MELON DEZIGN.


	

		
Name:
		
Henrik Lund Mikkelsen
	
	

		
Handle:
		
Seen
	
	

		
Group:
		
Melon Dezign
	
	

		
Former groups:
		
Anubis, (old) Kefrens, Rebels, Alliance Design/Quartex
	
	

		
Function:
		
Graphics, design
	
	

		
Age:
		
14 years this summer (mentally that is, ed.)
	
	

		
In the scene since:
		
1989
	
	

		
Occupation:
		
Unemployed globetrotter
	
	

		
Resident:
		
The Caribian
	
	

		
Most known prods:
		
S.O.S. demo, Tetris intro, various Crystal crack intros
	


In late 1991 and especially early 1992 the scene saw something completely new: happy colours, different design, childish drawings by a group which insisted on having their name spelled wrongly. The group was Melon Dezign and the two main men behind was Walt and Seen.
After being known mostly for Crystal crack intros, the S.O.S. trackmo was the first bigger Melon project by Seen. But his real breakthrough was when making the ideas and graphics for the Tetris intro which won the 40 kb competition at The Party 2. It was clear that not only the routines but also the design counted a lot.

Though most don't exactly admit to admire Melon's design they have been a big source of inspiration. The idea in the black and white Melon logo has been used by several other groups like Lemon., TSL, and Nemol.
- It's very lame that people just steal ideas instead of doing something original, says Seen who, despite he is not very tall, doesn't mind being provoking.

At The Party 1993 he was about to sue the arrangers since he meant that the copyrights to the simple party logo belonged to him. The logo was made when Seen was one of the succesful main organizers of The Party in 1991.

Melon Dezign was born with the death of Seen's former group, Alliance Design/Quartex. He felt inspired and startet Melon as a subgroup of Crystal together with Paleface who he had been working together with for a long time.

The Firm
Seen has always had ambitions and believe in that Melon Dezign is more than just a normal demogroup. Though people had problems with it in the beginning, Melon insited on having Dezign written with z.

Like all other groups, Melon wants high class members. Headhunting is however not their style. Seen never asks people to join, they have to ask themselves. For a long time only friends of Seen could join, even if they were French. And Seen has a good explaination to that.
- Why the hell should I be in group with someone I don't know or like?

There might be a new situation though since Seen erlier this year travelled the Caribian.

Melon was meant as a firm but till now only one game has been sold, the platform game Naughty Ones. There is "no shit organisation at all" in the group and concerning the leadership, Seen doesn't doubt...
- Me, me, me, myself and I! Walt is suspended from Melon Dezign for a while because he is insane in the brain.

Compared to a couple of years ago design seems to much more important today. Seen has another impression.
- It is not! Just look at most stuff released....

Chaos is the total opponent to Seen when it comes to the importance of design vs. code.
- How could I possibly disagree with someone like -CHAOS-?... He is the grandfather to us all in the scene, right? If thousands of dots makes him horny that's up to him. If things don't look nice I think they suck.

People seem to be writing credits everywhere and the sizes are growing.
- I think it's great that people bother to make their initials so enormously big that even my grandmother don't need glasses to read them. With this development the credits for logos might soon be bigger than the logos!
In Melon productions we only write credits if we feel like it and even then you can't be sure if you've been fooled...

When discussing new styles and design in general the difference between "original" and "ugly" doesn't need to be so big. But the answer can be much easier:
- Melon!

"The original and best!" is how Seen describes the Melon style and has a simple answer to which Melon production he thinks is best:
- The latest because it shows the state of mind that we're in!

Melon's thirdwinning demo at the Assembly '93 was called Romantic but most people were wondering WHAT was so romantic about it?
- Just about everything, except the hidden part! I mean, Banna's singing and faders are just what would make every girl's heart melt. Nobody dared to do this except us.

Romantic was one of the "biggest" Melon productions through the last year. Normally they prefer making intros of 10-60 seconds. But they don't think their productions are too small.
- They are more than big enough already!

With his attitude it's rather interesting if Seen has respect for other groups or non-Melon productions at all.
- I like the "Ottifanten" intro from Thrust and "Bar Brian" from Plasma Force... Movement are original and know how to make good design. That's why it's the only group we can cooperate with.
From years ago I have always admired Open Eyes for his total control of colours. Others?.... Nah, all a bunch of Andromeda clones!

The raw news
"To be disbanded" was an article in RAW predicting the death of Melon Dezign which Seen doesn't quite understand.
- I'm shocked to hear that we died before x-mas, I was totally unaware of that!

But Seen doesn't doubt the reason for such rumours.
- RAW is in serious need of interesting articles and they see no other way of getting them than trying to provoke. Lord Helmet wanted to make a joke but only made a fool of himself.
And contrary to popular belief we are not an "independent" group, but a subdivision of Crystal!
RAW is a bad copy of Zine, so I don't read it!

So yet there are no plans of stopping Melon Dezign.
- Are you mad? Shut down the only group with a Caribian beach section... The Melon spirit will never die.

One of the biggest wells of creativity and visual abstraction in the media market is the 24 hour channel, Music Television. It would be obvious to think that the Melon productions are being influenced by MTV.
- They are not! We get our inspiration from abstract German movies from the tventies and thirties! (No bullshit!) Neither Walt or I have MTV so you can't accuse us for stealing form there.
I get ideas everywhere. The end logo in the Tetris intro was an idea I got while I was in the bathroom. I just ran out, threw Walt away and startet drawing till the end.

Half man, half melon
After seeing Seen's (former) apartment you can't help thinking: Is Melon a disease? With Melon stickers, poster, pens, workbench icons and the heater painted half white, half black it doesn't look like a normal relationship to this red and greeen fruit.
- Yes, Melon is a disease, and there is no cure!

Melon is a religion aswell. When visiting the Italian city, Florence, Seen went drinking with some of his class mates. They headed for a bar but Seen flatly refused to enter the place. It was called Andromeda Bar....

Seen was once a member of Kefrens, but not the group which had succes in the last couple of years. Seen was in what today is called Old Kefrens (with Promax, Metallion etc.) which died in the beginning of 1991. That might be one of the reason why a kind of war was started between Melon Dezign and the reborn Kefrens with new people like Laxity.
After several hate productions against each other the small war between Melon Dezign and Kefrens reached it's climax at The Party 2. But after at long and loud argument in the cafeteria they agreed on a kind of peace. However the peace didn't last longer that till the release of Desert Dream which had a part with a Melon attacking the pyramids. The demo didn't have that much effect on the relationship between the two groups though. At least both groups attended the small Fishintrip shortly afterwards.
The small war was according to Seen not just for getting PR. He was sorry to hear that Kefrens was dying in the beginning of this year but whether this was only to keep the joke about beating "the evil King Kefren" in the game Naughty Ones, Seen doesn't want to say.

After Lemon. in their first production, Announce, had a logo looking very much similar to Melon's classic black/white this new group was also a Human Target for Melon. When asking people to order seats for the Melon party they wrote "Lemon. already did" and drew a toilet....

Seen has mixed feelings when explaining his general opinion about the scene today.
- Like everybody else being interviewed, I think it was better a few years ago, but then again, I thought the same back then...

Without Melon the scene wouldn't have been the same today. The modem scene is strange though I like playing around there sometimes. Normally I get free access. And if I don't I just DMS the workbench disk and uploads it under a funny name.

Especially the French Melon members have a high travel activity to parties but according to Seen it's not because of their big interest in the scene.
- No, they come to get harddrives!

Scene Gods
There have always been gods. It is a bit unpleasant to be one - too much fan mail!

After recieving many hundreds of letters, Walt and Seen promised membership of Melon Dezign to the one who would send the letter number 1000. But who did that?
- Laxity did. No further comment.

Originality
- Just like Boris Valejo and scanners, demo graphics is improving all the time! No, seriously I think the graphics of today lacks originality. The average demo of today features an awful lot of boring coding, graphics, music and dragons but lacks soul, humour and ideas!
I don't care shit about the hardest maths in a routine if it doesn't look interesting.

Enough has been written about the Melon party disaster in autumn '93 but still at least a comment to this event couldn't be left out.
- Melon Birthday Party was a succes! Who else can say that more than 150 people came to congratulate them at their birthday???

Blind Melon
- Ahhhh... our infamous video division. I love them! Too bad they aren't able to see our productions.

Though for a long time making crack intros Seen didn't see any problem in making games himself.
- Earlier we released Naughty Ones (under the Interactivision label, ed.) and another game is about to be released. Both of them are pure platform fun (don't go and buy them - they're crap!).

Naughty Ones was in most mags well recieved, mostly because of the gameplay. Amiga Format gave the game an overall of 86% and said: "It can't boast flash graphics or a huge number of levels, but what Naughty Ones has is stacks of gameplay. It's an original, enjoyable and challenging platform romp".

The graphics in the game was given 7/10 and described as "simple but effective... clear, bright and bouncy, but not too cutesy". Demoscene viewers will probably describe it as pure melonmania...

When looking at especially the game characters, Jim and John, the influence from Bitmap Brothers is obvious.
- Yeah, Bitmap Brothers truely make some great games both conserning gamplay and design in the smallest details.

But this will probably not be the last entertainment software we see from Seen.
- When I return from the Caribian in about half a year (after eating melons every day!) we plan to start a software company by the name of Melon deZign!

Though he has experienced the environment, Seen can't give much advice of how to survive and win in the jungle of software houses.
- Just don't believe anyone! Else you will be cheated.

Commercials and media manipulation should something that Melon Dezign think about when maing their productions.
- The commercials shows that the civilized world have become a commercial copy of itself. Media manipulation is a horrible thing!

But Seen is aware of his influence on people.
- Yes! And I would be stupid if I didn't admit that I like it very much. Mostly when you spread a production you know as much about the effect of it as when throwing a stone in the ocean. But once I saw an article about Melon in which the writer had had done analysis on the texts in all our productions. Really amazing.

With his abilities to release simple but effective messages and productions Seen easily can see himself doing PR, design or commercials in the future.
- Yes, for Ted Bates! (a leading advertising agency in Denmark, ed.). An alternative job could be... organizer of The Party IV!


CONTRAST

Mr. Hyde/Andromeda:
Seen is a graphician with strong opinions. My first impression of him was rather bad since he at The Party 2 critizised the design in Point Blank for being a total Melon design rip-off and Mirror for being boring. But he does like to provoke.
Melon Dezign have in general nice design and among that has Seen no doubt been a major factor in the development of Amiga demo design.
It is a shame that the Melon coders has to suffer and only make intros.
Seen is very ambitious and believes strongly in their projects though others dislike them, e.g. the intro from The Party 3.

Estrup/Static Bytes:
I don't exactly admire Seen's graphical talents. But I do like his distanced way of looking at the scene. My talks with him are mostly less than 50% about computers.
It is really incredible that there can be as much devil-may-careness as common sence in such a small man. His seriousness is very varying.
I would nearly say that he made me feel a kind of cannibal when eating melons....
Seen is definately a nice guy which took me some time to find out.

Ra/Sanity:
1m61, 56 kg, blue eyes, blond hair, he is the only guy who don't take kiloes of fat day after day in this scene. Perhaps we should learn lessons of the real life from Seen.
Fairfax, Dr Awesome, Hof, Peachy, Joachim, and you Mikael Balle, together in community, we should show the right attitude to all the future mag readers who will try to stop eating 2 days before parties, just to lose small part of fat in their face.
I like his graphics. He is better than Fairfax and Danny.