''Gumbasia'' is a 3-minute short film released on September 2, 1953, the first

clay animation Clay animation or claymation, sometimes plasticine animation, is one of many forms of stop-motion animation. Each animated piece, either character or background, is "deformable"—made of a malleable substance, usually plasticine clay. Tra ...

produced by

Art Clokey Arthur "Art" Clokey (born Arthur Charles Farrington; October 12, 1921 – January 8, 2010) was an American pioneer in the popularization of stop-motion clay animation, best known as the creator of the character Gumby and the original voice o ...

. He used the same technique to create the classic characters ''

Gumby ''Gumby'' is an American clay animation franchise, centered on the titular green clay humanoid character created and modeled by Art Clokey. Gumby stars in two television series, the feature-length '' Gumby: The Movie'', and other media. He im ...

'' and ''

Davey and Goliath ''Davey and Goliath'' is a Christian clay-animated children's television series, whose central characters were created by Art Clokey, Ruth Clokey, and Dick Sutcliffe, and which was produced first by the United Lutheran Church in America and la ...

''.

Production

Clokey created ''Gumbasia'' while a student at the

University of Southern California , mottoeng = "Let whoever earns the palm bear it" , religious_affiliation = Nonsectarian—historically Methodist , established = , accreditation = WSCUC , type = Private research university , academic_affiliations = , endowment = $8.1 ...

under the direction of

Slavko Vorkapić Slavoljub "Slavko" Vorkapić ( sr-Cyrl, Славољуб "Славко" Воркапић; March 17, 1894 – October 20, 1976), known in English as Slavko Vorkapich, was a Serbian-born Hollywood montagist, an independent cinematic artist, chair ...

. In his father's garage, he worked the clay on a ping-pong table. The film is a surreal short of pulsating shapes and lumps of clay set to jazz music in a homage of

Walt Disney Walter Elias Disney (; December 5, 1901December 15, 1966) was an American animator, film producer and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the American animation industry, he introduced several developments in the production of cartoons. As a film p ...

's '' Fantasia''. ''Gumbasia'' was created in a style Vorkapić taught, called Kinesthetic Film Principles and described as "massaging of the eye cells". Based on camera movements and stop-motion editing, this provides much of the look and feel of ''Gumby'' films. When Clokey showed ''Gumbasia'' to film producer Sam Engel in 1955, Engel funded a 15-minute short film that became the first ''Gumby'' episode, "Gumby Goes to the Moon". Based on that episode, a TV series titled ''Fun in Gumbasia'' was scheduled for release in mid-2017.

References

External links

* *
Article at Gumbyworld.com

ArtClokey: the First 50 Years
{{Disney's Fantasia 1955 films Clay animation films Articles containing video clips 1955 animated films Abstract animation Animated films without speech American animated short films 1955 short films 1950s stop-motion animated films 1950s American films 1950s American animated films