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Hello…
My name is Ingo Mesche. I guess you knew already that I work as a freelance "Digital Artist". But did you know that I started out back in 1982? Guess not. That’s why I put down in words how my career evolved and what I’ve done so far. Have fun reading and feel free to contact me with any question.
1. THE BEGINNING:
2. PARADISE ON EARTH AND GAMBOL IN HELL:
3. WHEN STARS "BYTE":
4. MOORHUHN IS BORN:
5. PASSION AND LOVE BEYOND GAMES:
6. THE FINAL STEP:
1. THE BEGINNING:
I was born in 1971 in Dortmund, a highly populated town in the center of Germany.
Ever since I was a child my mother and father used to keep me quiet with pen and paper. I’ve always enjoyed drawing for hours. My brother got his first computer in 1982. I had my first contact with a "paint program" (magic painter) on that machine. Compared to the pencils I used to get from my mom that was a real nice change :) Since then I’ve been fascinated by computers as a tool to draw and play with.
From 1989 through 1991 I was trained as sales manager at a computer retailer. During those years my brother and I went through a couple of computer models, including the Commodore c128, Amiga 500 and an Amiga 2000. I bought D-Paint (a 2d drawing program) for the Amiga and I totally loved it. It had some functions, which I really miss now working with Photoshop (e.g. animation).
2. PARADISE ON EARTH AND GAMBOL IN HELL:
One day, my brother started using Sculpt Animate 4d (a 3d program). Strangely enough I wasn’t too much into 3d at that time. I preferred my lovely D-Paint, which really became better and better with every single upgraded version. I was totally proud to make people think I used 32 colors even though I was in fact just using 16 colors. Ahh.... the old days.... To me it was not only fun to draw with 4 colors in a resolution of 16x16 pixels for a sprite. It was also about becoming a pro in computer graphics design. Together with some friends of mine I formed an Amiga "demo group" called "Paradise". I was in charge of the graphics, of course, for several really cool intros and demos.
It was around that time when I met Achim Schulze. He was a freelance game programmer for "Rainbow Arts", a German computer game company. I told him about "Paradise" and he asked me to show him some of my graphics. A month later we had our first game completed together: "Gambol". The game was never released and Achim has vanished ever since, just as fast as he had shown up. Strange.
3. WHEN STARS "BYTE":
Once into computer games I’ve met several "programmers" and "Artists". I did the graphics for some more games, always hoping that some day one of those games would be released.(Well, I was wrong...) I found that freelance game programmers have not been the most reliable people at that time. (At least those I met).
After my training as a sales manager, Christoph Werner, a friend of mine, who was into computer graphics too, started as computer graphics artist at "Starbyte", another game company in Germany. One fine day he offered to show me around in their offices. That very same day I got a job as assistant art director at Starbyte. In the beginning, I helped out with small animations and optimized some graphics here and there. The most important games I work on during my tenure at Starbyte were "SpaceMAX" and "Hannibal". Both games were programmed by Andreas Seebeck. The idea for Hannibal came from Claude Cueni, an author in Switzerland. The three of us became really good friends and we do actually still work together as a team.
4. MOORHUHN IS BORN:
Unfortunately, Starbyte closed shop after two years. Some of the members formed "The Art Department", but I decided to work on my own again. As freelancer, I made several computer games with the Art Department and interactive TV games under Claude's label "Black Pencil". After some very good projects I was able to buy my first SGI with A/W`s Poweranimator V6. I had already had the chance to get familiar with V4 while working at Starbyte.
Some busy years and updates later, Frank of The Art Department asked me if I had any ready-to-use cartoon character for a "Johnnie Walker" game. I showed him a chicken which I made as an enemy for a game I shelved some years before. I had to upgrade it a bit from the Amiga 32x32 pixel-level to PC standard. But as soon as I got the graphics to full bloom in 3d everyone was more than happy about the results. So, I ended up designing all the graphics for the game, including my chicken, which became the lead character of the Moorhuhn game (engl. moorhen).
5. PASSION AND LOVE BEYOND GAMES:
Life went on as usual after that little Moorhuhn intermezzo. My 3d program was upgraded several times and I kept on buying newer computers. One fine day Alias/Wavefront released the 3d program Maya which I still use today, replacing my good old Poweranimator. I met my girlfriend over the internet in 1999. She is Maltese living on Malta with her two children. After a while the distance between Germany and Malta became simply unbearable for our love and too expensive for our wallets (even coach class is quite expensive, if you flew as often as we did). Finally in 2000, I packed all my belongings and moved to Malta.
Suddenly, two years after its "birth" Moorhuhn reappeared on the gaming market. Radio stations were advertising the game and TV stations did the same. All of a sudden there was a total craze about it and my Moorhuhn became one of the most popular characters in Europe. How funny, my little Amiga-Moorhuhn became really famous as PC-Moorhuhn after all.
6. THE FINAL STEP:
Finally, I found some time to finish my website. As an "artist", it was really difficult to find the right way to present myself. I hope you all like my website the way it is now. I think the buttons are self-explanatory. Well, it seems that you were able to find this text at least.
In "works" you can see an outline of my career as "digital artist". I don't want to show just my best graphics. That would be like "cheating", at least in my eyes. Usually, projects I’ve worked on had super tight release dates. Very often you just don’t get the time you’d like to have to make changes or work on details. That’s just simply the way our business works.
The small logo, which is the first icon in the timeline, shows some "highlights". So, if you don’t have the time to go through all the years, check out my favorite selection right there. In case you want to see more, click on each year one by one and you will see most of the projects I’ve done so far. I am not showing the graphics in animated format on this web site. It would just steal too much of your time downloading them all, believe me.
Have a look into the works` section from time to time for updates.
Thanks to everyone, who is reading this now and to all the people, who helped me in my Life, especially to my love Grace and her two children.
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