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.”