CR Blog
Callum Bain: Radio Gabba
Advertising, Books, Graphic Design
Posted by Mark Sinclair, 13 September 2007, 10:21 Permalink Comments (2)
In the calm of Nottingham Trent University’s superb graphic design show at the Business Design Centre in London a couple of months ago, the atmosphere was regularly disrupted by the work of fellow NTU student, Callum Bain. He’d made an advert for a digital radio station; it was on his reel and he eagerly showed it to visitors every few minutes. Bain could have chosen any mainstream music genre for his particular radio station – but, instead, he decided to terrify people with gabba…
“The rapid, heavy, fast-paced nature of the music attracted me to it and was a key factor towards shaping the animation,” says Bain of his 44-second stencil-based stop-frame animation, Radionation. “Relating the musical genre to its DIY roots for inspiration, and with a touch of rave culture as an influence, I wanted the visuals to be grimey while still current and fresh.”
Bain filmed his Gabba spot in the basement of his flat, spray-painting each frame onto a white wall, then painting over the images and starting again when he ran out of space. Then he got some of mates round – complete with hoodies and scary masks – for the live-action footage.
“I have a keen interest in graffiti and had never seen it animated before so wanted to experiment with its possibilities," he says. "As I found the visuals really successful, I documented my process, too. This was to showcase that the project was done singularly and that all the animation work was completed in stop-frame by hand.
“Once this footage was collected and edited together, I sped it up and made a “making-of” style documentary/tutorial – over 30 hours of footage into 16 minutes." An edited version appears below:
"This piece also represented the nature of the music, so goes hand-in-hand with the actual advert, while still being an individual piece of work in its own right. The important factor is that it is hand-done, real life animation, not digital.”
2 Comments
Hats off to Callum - A brilliantly executed piece of work
2007-09-25 05:02:31
Really inspiring. I respect people like Callum who think outside the box.
2009-03-20 11:17:31
| D&AD Student Award winners (5) |
| Michael Jackson: graphic designer (24) |
| D&AD New Blood Part Two (12) |
| The Get Involved Poster Show (3) |
| MTV's brand new look (37) |
| The Bible According To Google Earth |
| New Deal typeface |
| Rubik's Cube Type Stamp |
| The YouTube Dilemma |
| Low-Fi Sci-Fi |
| Advertising | (522) | |
| Art | (136) | |
| Books | (111) | |
| Digital | (131) | |
| Graphic Design | (386) | |
| Illustration | (172) | |
| Magazine / Newspaper | (64) | |
| Moving Image | (421) | |
| Photography | (142) | |
| Type / Typography | (108) |





