Back in 2006 Ashley Burrell (ABTEC‘s Managing Director) decided it was time for ABTEC to have a new company logo/mascot so he contacted some friends at a local animation company and asked if they could come up with something that would represent the company well.
When they came back with a sketch of a robot Ashley was like “What’s that got to do with car audio”, they soon explained that most companies usually used cars and wheels so they wanted to try something a little different.
They also went on and showed how they used car audio (Tweeters mid-range speakers in the shoulders and the sub-woofer in the chest) and numerous car parts (springs, shocks, exhaust manifolds, wiring looms etc) which tied in perfect with the ABTEC Team all being car enthusiasts.
Here is the original sketch here:
Soon after Catalyst Creative (Even today they hold “The Audio Droid” in high regard as their flagship design) started working on the animation of what now is dubbed “The Audio Droid” and I must say they did an awesome job of it too! I’m no expert on animation but it looks like a lot of hours must of gone into making The Audio Droid.
Here is a few pics of the raw animations in making:
Ok, time to go off topic for a bit of history on the ABTEC name…
Back when Ashley was still living is Australia it was suggested to him that he should start his own car audio company, his first question to this was “What would I call it?”. The answer to this was “ABTEC!” which at first even Ashley was asking “What does ABTEC mean?”.
What does ABTEC mean? Well it means Ashley Burrell Technical, which makes perfect sense if you think about it. Ashley has been in the industry for over 30 years now and has taken part of every aspect of the company, you can even catch him doing install’s on the company cars from time to time too!
Back to The Audio Droid! Over the years there has been subtle changes to The Audio Droid including darkening of the blue armour and its even been used by a Brazilian company to advertise Digital Designs sub-woofers which I think is very cool.
Here’s that picture here:
The Audio Droid has featured in all of ABTEC‘s TV Adverts too and since there isn’t a lot I can say about the adverts so I will let ads speak for them selves!
I’ll end this blog off a little differently today, with two of my favourite pics of The Audio Droid. I don’t really know why these two pics keep sticking in my mind but I do know one thing, I want the ABTEC Rock as a paper weight on my desk!
Time for the credits.
We would like to thank the guys at Catalyst Creative & Burrell Marketing Group for bringing our Audio Droid alive!