







the peak years of the Amiga demo scene. Young 14 year old Martin was always fascinated with games, and used to spend all his time playing with his C64. Together with a handful of dedicated friends, he met at his school's art course, he started a diskmag style production where everybody could contribute with whatever he saw fit. This was then literally spread by hand in the school yard! At the time Martin was using Koala Paint on the C64. "I just couldn't create everything I had in mind. Drawing with a joystick really sucked!"

Martin was introduced to Deluxe Paint on the Amiga by a friend, and he immediately fell in love with mouse pixelling. At the time he was very interested in cartoons and graffiti, so it was very natural for him to start transferring this style of art onto the screen. "I started to swap demos, and this is how I got my first contacts in the demo scene. I liked the style of the scene, I liked the coolness of being part of the crack scene, so I tried everything in my power to be as good as the best artists of the time" He built his first group together with some friends, all coming from his hometown of Munich, Germany. "It was at this time that my connections with the scene started to grow", says Fade One.

Subsequent years saw his name credited on intros from a multitude of groups. Fade One started to hop from one group to another. He went wherever he smelled any demo activity, and his fame started to grow by the month. In TRSI he did pictures for the Ecliptica demo (placed 3rd at The Party 1992) and the graphics for the 3-disk Virgill musicdisk, Viktoria (1994). In Lego he produced the hit Amiga slideshow Never Liked Uno (1994). "The name does not refer to Uno of Scoopex but the American card-game which I never liked", he says. Indeed in times to come he pixelled a picture together with Uno for an issue of ROM. In Essence he was credited for the 40K Brainbow intro (2nd placer at The Gathering 1996).












game graphics was not that much different or harder from the kind of work I was doing in the scene. So I just sent letters to a few German game developers, asking for work" It did not take long until Fade One received a positive answer from Kaiko (a small label that produced Amiga games like Apidya), where he signed for his very first freelance job. "My portfolio of demo work helped a lot to get into the business", he says.

One day, Fade One received a letter from Sega of America. It was a work proposal. "I was still in school and doing logos for cracktros!", he exclaims with a vicious smile! The letter was forwarded to him by a fellow member of Essence, as Sega could not find Fade One's address anywhere! "They offered me to move to USA with a basic salary of 35k+ plus all insurance expenses. All they had seen was some artwork in one demo. Even though I opted not to go to the US because I wanted to finish my studies, it was clear that I wanted to earn my living doing digital artwork in the future".

His thoughts were not much far away from what was about to happen in the months to come. After freelancing for diverse game projects, ranging from shareware titles to full price game products, he searched for a company that was close to his hometown of Munich. "By accident or pure chance, I sent an e-mail to Shin'en, a company I didn't know much about for the time being. The people that built Shin'en also came from the Amiga demo scene and knew of my work, but never had my contact address!" Shin'en was founded by Pink and Bartman from the Amiga group Abyss, and were having a quite successful time with their console titles. It didn't take long until a deal was signed, packed & sealed, and since then Fade One has been constantly working on different projects for the Nintendo DS and Wii for the past three years now. Nanostray 2, the followup to their hit success on Nintendo DS has just been released in October 2008 in the European market, through Codemasters. An R-Type inspired shooter, the game features the graphical work of Fade One, and already registered hit sales when released earlier this year in the US market.


The guy who used to do cracktro logos 15 years ago is now doing concept designs, character modelling, texturing, interface designs, and  keyframe animation as a living. "I'm the lead artist and I try my best to make as much art as humanly possible. The rest has to be organized and outsourced" Today Martin works with Photoshop, Maya, 3d Studio Max and MudBox. "In my work I don't have to do full screen pictures anymore. However if we need full screen layouts or menus I look around on the internet or in art books for inspiration. The picture is then built slowly in my head and then I start laying it out on the computer straight away. Sometimes I do small sketches to remember any ideas that pop into my mind. When I was young and doing demo graphics I was inspired a lot by comics and graffiti. Right now I am mostly excited by the best games and movie artists". Martin admits that he doesn't follow what happens in the art world outside the computer domains. "I enjoy architecture and great landscapes and I have much respect for a lot of concept artists from the movie and game industries".









I am mostly doing graphics for the Nintendo DS, so more than often we need limited resolution graphics with maybe 16 colours at most. The tools got a little better throughout the years, but it's still basically the same concept. Today I prefer to draw using a style that is living, colourful, breathing and fantastic. I always make sure that my picture stays a picture though. If I want something totally real, I look at nature. I think that one can't do much realistic pictures on computer. The result always looks off, at least for me"

Martin says that he still enjoys doing things the old skool way. "Sculpting is a really good new way of creating art assets, but I still enjoy doing texture work by pixelling them myself, with no photo source" Today Martin admits that he has not been active in the demo scene for more than 12 years, and he does not follow the scene or watch demos anymore. He is still in contact with his old friend Calvin of GFX Twins fame, and obviously the old Abyss members during his work day. He does not think that the demoscene had any particular positive aspect on his career, even though he admits that his artwork in demos paved down the road to the world of game creation. "I want to make better art and better games. Those my main future plans for the time being"

I boot up my A1200 and check my old project folders. I am welcomed by dozens of pictures and fonts from Fade One, from the time we were both in the same group. The demo scene might never see any of these 16 colour pictures, but for me they mean a whole world. Indeed, some memories and names never fade away.

by Mop (Alcatraz)
