GLASS ANIMALS’ TOUR OF EARTH

In 2024, FRAY Studio created visuals for Glass Animals' Tour of Earth. The initial brief challenged the team to create a deep, dark, punk-inspired journey through space. They collaborated closely with the band's lead singer, Dave Bayley, and Production Designers Cassius Creative.

During creative development, they quickly concluded that Notch's Virtual Background feature would be central to realising their goals. With its clean edge detection, they could create clearly defined figures and generate tunnels using cloners for songs like "On the Run." For "How I Learned To Love The Bomb," they replicated glitch-block overlays, faulty TV signals, and exaggerated slit-scan effects to transition between verse and chorus.

The creative team incorporated extensive MIDI integration with programmer Ed White. FRAY developed an approach for real-time beat modifications in Notch-generated and -rendered content. For instance, they built "Wonderful Nothing" entirely in Notch with visuals inspired by analogue oscilloscopes responding directly to the band's performance.

Each visual element was controlled by different instruments and audio sampling, creating unique patterns that modulated in real time. The visuals were fully reactive, stopping when the band stopped playing, and had no pre-rendered elements.

To tie it all together, the team made a master grade, experimenting with Notch's post effects to achieve a custom 16mm filter combining edge detection, blur, and colour correction. Beneath the primary overlay, they created song-specific grades ranging from simple to complex with verse-chorus progression.

Additional press coverage:

PAPER Magazine, 303 Magazine, Shameless SF, Stage Right Secrets.