Gumby Creator, Art Clokey, Dies

The world of animation has come a long way in the past 50 years.

Today's kids are entertained by many different forms of animation from computer generated to stop-motion to traditional illustrated cartoons.

It took many people long hours of work and deep devotion to get animation to the place it is today. One of those people was Art Clokey.

Clokey was born in 1921 and at the time was named Arthur Farrington. As a child he made figures out of mud, clay or any material he could find. After being abandoned by his biological parents, Clokey was adopted by musician and artist Joseph Clokey. It was this adoptive father who encouraged Art Clokey to pursue his dreams in art and animation.

In his early career, Clokey worked as a teacher while learning the basics of filmmaking.

Clokey's most popular series, "Gumby", originated in a stop-motion experimental film called "Gumbasia". This was the beginning of the adventures of Gumby, which would delight children with its unique approach to animation. Gumby was a green, human-like character shaped like a piece of chewing gum with arms and legs. The show involved Gumby and his sidekick horse, Pokey, getting into various adventures. There were 233 episodes of "Gumby".

The process of stop-motion clay animation was and remains a tedious process. In stop-motion animation, clay figures are moved in small intervals and photographed. Putting all the photographs together results in the characters looking as though they are moving. Computer generated animation has become more popular than stop motion because animators can accomplish more in a smaller period of time. However stop motion will always have a place in the animation world because of its unique characteristics that cannot easily be reproduced in other ways.

After "Gumby", Clokey moved on to other projects. Art Clokey was a religious man and decided in the 1960s to work on his other popular series, "Davey and Goliath". This was a religious based show about a boy and his dog, and it is still shown on television today. After this series, Clokey went through a time of spiritual confusion and eventually ended up experimenting with various forms of mysticism.

Clokey also made some less popular feature length films as well as other projects, although none will be remembered as fondly as "Gumby" and "Davey and Goliath".

Clokey died on Friday, January 8, 2010 at the age of 88. He will be missed by fans of all ages.