MORE CARNAGE FEATURED: DUCKY ELFORD - “BALLAD OF G.A.D”
The Ballad of G.A.D is not an animation so much as an emotional weather system. Elford opens the chest cavity and lets the pressure spill out—bold visuals thrashing, metaphors mutating, colours swelling in ways only someone who has lived the experience could articulate. Anxiety becomes a sentient landscape here: twisting, expanding, collapsing, reforming. A terrain that demands navigation rather than denial.
It embodies the MORE CARNAGE ethos not through violence but through raw, unfiltered exposure—an interior fracture rendered through digital play. The “cute” aesthetic Elford often subverts becomes a weapon, a trapdoor, a mirror catching the viewer at their most vulnerable angle. It is rebellion through softness. Ferocity through metaphor.
Watching The Ballad of G.A.D is like being inside a mind doing everything it can to remain intact while the world keeps shape-shifting too quickly to track. Its risk is emotional nakedness. Its resistance is honesty. Its revelation is that anxiety is neither weakness nor spectacle—it’s a rhythm, a pulse, a ballad that too many people know by heart but rarely speak aloud.
This is why it belongs in MORE CARNAGE: it shows that rupture can be quiet, internal, looping. Chaos can be tender. And survival isn’t always triumphant—it’s often just someone choosing to stay, breath by breath, frame by frame.
ABOUT DUCKY ELFORD
Rob “Ducky” Elford is a neurodivergent designer and digital artist whose work navigates the charged intersection of art and play. His practice spans animation, VFX, 3D modelling, game design, and rapid prototyping, weaving these forms into speculative, metaphysical, and culturally critical digital worlds. Elford’s recent work explores sexual identity, discrimination, and the tightening grip of conservative ideology on British culture. He frequently subverts cartoon-like aesthetics—referencing Sianne Ngai’s theories of “cuteness” and hidden power—to challenge infantilisation and reclaim softness as an act of resistance. His practice extends into teaching across graphic design, animation, and media production.
