










His colleagues say that he is a jovial and friendly guy, but little do they know, that no more than 12 years ago, he was known as the almighty Cougar of Sanity!

Christian started computing on the Spectrum. In 1987 he acquired a C64 and was hooked day & night on the many games available on tape. "I just wanted to get as many new games as I could", he remembers. He figured out that the easiest way to have an ongoing supply of games was to join one of the known groups that were behind the cracktros of the time. This was not the easiest task though, so Christian built his own group, TBC (The Black Commando) together with some locals. His friends wondered about his position within the group, so clutching a copy of Amica Paint in his hands, he declared himself as the main graphician of the group!

In 1989 Christian watched the Red Sector Megademo, and he was so impressed by the visuals he had just witnessed that he loudly exclaimed "Yeah this is what I want to do!". He started using Deluxe Paint and later Brilliance. On Amiga he joined Level 4 (one the the first Amiga groups) where he befriended coder & musician JPN. Two years later the two left the group to form Vertical. Cougar's stay in this new group did not last long, and he was offered membership in Sanity where his work was promptly used in the demo Turmoil, released at The Party 1991. Cougar made many appearances in most of Sanity's better productions, including Jesterday (the winning musicdisk at the Shining8 Easter Party 1992), World of Commodore (the "Best of Sanity" demo from 1992, and often considered as one of the best A500 demos of all time), Interference (1993), The Party 1994 demo Roots (considered by many expert graphicians as the demo showing off the best Cougar art to date) and it's 1995 followup Roots 2.0. "It was fun meeting my group friends, work together on demos, finishing them close to the deadline before or even at a party", he remembers.

His admiration for the work of Joe of TRSI stimulated him to refine his pixelling techniques and strive for perfect composition. "It was somehow a big motivation to become as good as he was. He did great Logos". Cougar grew, and his name had become a much feared and revered one at graphic competitions. Whenever his pictures appeared on the big screen, silence and light murmuring took over the party hall, only to be followed by bursts of applause. Indeed, his most known picture is the fabulous DragonSun, winner of The Party 1993. Once, during a party in Hamburg, Cougar was drawing his contribution for the graphics competition all day and night, without any sleeping or breaks. "After finishing the picture right in time, I was so terrible tired that I started to have hallucinations. I saw people that were never there, coming at me!" Dutch graphician Danny (nowadays a Hollywood sfx artist) once said that he admires Cougar because his aim is that of doing the perfect picture, and this one fixation might well have been the main reason why Cougar was considered the best in his line of work in those scene days.






His new pictures used a different technique to what we were accustomed to in the scene, and his aquarelle creations were not so highly considered in a graphics scene dominated with dragons and naked women themes.His stay in Artwork lasted 10 months. And then he disappeared from the demo scene. He did not follow others onto the PC scene but started doing graphics for games. Indeed some of his commercial work can be admired in the 1994 game Iron Soldier by Eclipse Software. "I decided to focus on my life. I studied visual design, got a full time job, met the woman of my life, married, we bought a house and had 2 children!". As Cougar himself well put it, "there was no space for
demos anymore".

Today Christian is a much esteemed expert in his field of work. He works at one of the bigger information technology & internet services companies in Germany, and is responsible for user experience & design amongst his many duties. In 2007 he was a speaker at FMX, one of the biggest European meetings of the digital community held annually in Germany; where his conference on the use of animated 3D characters in Internet based communication was very well attended. This year he was also credited with the invention of a new method and system of telecommunication over networks. He says that his many years of demo scene work have helped him considerable. "I've learned how to focus on pixel perfect details and most importantly, that having fun while working results in a drastic rise in quality!"

During his work day he mostly works with Photoshop, Flash and Illustrator, a much different environment to his Amiga Deluxe Paint glory days. "On one hand it’s easier to get good results, as you don't need any good techniques in dithering and anti-aliasing. You have high resolutions and unlimited colours, but on the other hand you have the possibility to concentrate on your own creative aspects and ideas, motifs, composition and style" Christian does not only use the computer as a drawing medium, but also draws on paper and canvas. "Inspiration usually hits me at a sudden, either on the underground train, at the pub... basically anywhere!" His fondness for fantasy art is a thing of the past. "I'm not into that style of art today, as much as I used to be in the past. Today I am more into surrealistic, bizarre and iconographic" Indeed Christian adores the work of Miro, Kandinski, Hundertwasser, and Dali. "Dali had a really crazy style in his days! He inspired me to draw some surrealistic scene graphics"









Although he does not follow the demo scene regularly, he has occasional encounters with active sceners, who seem to have the fixation of showing him the latest demos on their laptops, who are incidentally always at hand, and always loaded with demo stuff! "New skool is nice. It's good that sceners don't lose their inspiration to do new things". Christian is still in contact with a few of his old scene friends like Mel’o’Dee, Chaos and Nightmare. "The old days were a pretty cool time! I'm really glad that I had the chance to be part of the demo
scene in those days"

Many artists from the old days are making a comeback in today's modern scene. Christian suspiciously looks at us. He understands that we are waiting for some kind of confirmation from him. "You never know", he concludes with a subtle smirk.

by Mop (Alcatraz)