The Gumby Pilot Film, "Gumbasia" (1953)

~ Howdy, Folks!

"Gumbasia", a 3 minute 10 second short film produced in 1953 and released on September 2, 1955, was the first clay animation produced by Art Clokey, who went on to create the classic series, Gumby and Davey and Goliath, using the same technique.

Clokey created Gumbasia while studying at the University of Southern California under the direction of Slavko Vorkapić. The film was a surreal short of pulsating shapes and lumps of clay set to music in a parody of Walt Disney's Fantasia. Gumbasia was created in a style Vorkapić taught called Kinesthetic Film Principles. Described as "massaging of the eye cells" this technique, based on camera movements and stop-motion editing, is responsible for much of the look and feel later seen in Gumby films. When Clokey showed Gumbasia to film producer Sam Engel in 1955, Engel decided to fund a 15-minute short film that became the first Gumby episode —"Gumby Goes to the Moon".

~ Howdy, Folks!

I was fortunate to meet with Art Clokey in San Diego during a promotional Gumby tour in 1985. He was ramping things up for the new Gumby series produced by Lorimar-Telepictures in 1986. Art was best described as an eccentric who was always thinking out of the box. He avoided or seemingly ignored questions specific to Gumby and Davey and Goliath. Instead he described his studies with Slavko Vorkapić and the dynamics of cinema montage techniques. He ended his talk with some discussion on spiritual matters in regards to meditation and purification, finishing up the evening with a showing of his Zen-like clay film, "Mandala" (1977).

~ Howdy, Folks!

Here is an excerpt from another bizarre claymation from Art Clokey, "The Clay Peacock" (1963), supposedly a take off on the NBC peacock logo.

~ Howdy, Gumby Gang!

Of course the best and by far the most surrealistic Gumby cartoons were the first batch of 12 shorts from 1955-1957 made for the Howdy Doody Show! Here is the episode that started it all, "Gumby On the Moon" (1955). Bizarre! They way I like em'!