Gumby-themed on Google Doodle

Search giant Google on Wednesday paid tribute to stop-motion clay animation director Arthur "Art" Clokey with an interactive Google Doodle featuring "clay-animated" characters.

Replacing the usual Google logo on Google's home page are "balls" of clay beside a "G" block. The "L" animates to invite the user to click on the other balls.

Each ball is a different character that animates when clicked on. They are based on characters crated by Clokey.

A screenshot of Google's doodle paying tribute to clay animation.

Clicking on the text on top of the doodle – "Art Clokey's 90th Birthday" – takes the visitor to a search results page on Art Clokey.

Clokey was born October 12, 1921 and died January 8, 2010.



He was was a pioneer in popularizing stop-motion clay animation, beginning in 1955 with a film experiment called Gumbasia.

From the Gumbasia project, Clokey and his wife Ruth invented "Gumby," who with his horse "Pokey" became a popular presence on television.

The Gumbyworld site said Clokey worked with clay for 50 years to produce works of art that form a catalog of “firsts" in the medium of film.

It credited him for making the first music video, Gumbasia, where colored clay shapes moved and transformed to the jazz rhythms.

Also, he was the first to introduce the use of clay models of objects, animals and people in television commercials.

"He was the first to develop clay animation techniques and the first to use them in full-length feature films. He invented trimentional animation based on kinesthetic principles, and it became the signature of his career," it said.

"(Clokey) was a dynamic creator who inspired children and adults for the past six decades. Gumby, his most famous character, is a pop-culture icon. He and his first wife, Ruth, also created the famed Davey and Goliath series," it added.

Source: http://www.gmanews.tv/story/235065/technology/gumby-themed-google-doodle-pays-tribute-to-clay-animation-pioneer