Throwback Thursday – Bruce Goff: A Creative Mind
In 2010, Skyline Ink donated more than 4,000 hours of production time for the groundbreaking museum exhibit Bruce Goff: A Creative Mind. The resulting collection of animation explores the architectural achievements of one of the 20th century’s most internationally respected architects.
Sifting through hand-drawn renderings and plans along with notes, letters and magazine articles, our team of 3D artists carefully recreated 12 designs either never built or destroyed. Dramatic views were combined with music inspired by Mr. Goff’s extensive record collection to bring the buildings to life.
Skyline Ink was honored to collaborate with the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, Price Tower Arts Center and the OU Colleges of Architecture and Engineering to present this review of Mr. Goff’s creativity. Groundbreaking designs previously only seen in artist’s renderings, plans or historic photographs can now be experienced in a new way. The installations included reproductions of the original, beautifully hand-drawn renderings, as well as physical models generated from our new digital models. The exhibition also included original Bruce Goff paintings. In addition to the 12 cinematic animations, several sequences were produced in large format with ambient sound and presented on a three-panel, 45 foot screen to create an immersive experience. Faculty and students of the OU College of Architecture designed and built this dramatic “pod” theater, inspired by Mr. Goff’s work.
Our team of artists researched each project to create digital 3D models incorporating much of the information that would be used to build the physical building. Digital 3D models were based on images and documents obtained from the Art Institute of Chicago, Price Tower Arts Center, Oklahoma History Center, and information provided by colleagues of Mr. Goff. Aside from the research, the process followed our typical methods for architectural visualization. Virtual cameras were placed and programmed to create the same effects used in filming, and a computer render farm processed the files over several weeks to generate the animated sequences. The scenes were edited together with music and special effects in a process similar to movie post-production.
All of the animation can be viewed on Vimeo at
