Google doodle celebrates Arthur Clokey and Gumby

[Jazzy]

Google is celebrating the birthday of motion animation pioneer Arthur Art Clokey in its latest Google doodle.

Mr Clokey, who died last year and would have been 90 today, is renown for his work with stop motion animations using clay figures which he started in 1955.



The Detroit-born artist is best known for Gumby, a clay figure and star of theGumby Show, which enjoyed a 35-year run on US television.



Interest in his characters was given a boost in the 1980s when Eddie Murphy parodied Gumby in a Saturday Night Live skit.



One of Clokey's first clay animation productions was Gumbasia, a short, surreal homage to Walt Disney's Fantasia that caught the eye of Samuel G Engel, then president of the Motion Pictures Producers Association. Mr Engel was soimpressed that he later financed the pilot film for what became the Gumby Show.



Film appearances, comic strips, merchandise and reruns in the 1990s on Nickelodeon and the Cartoon Network stand as testimony to Gumby's enduring popularity.



Google’s latest doodle features some of Clokey's characters jumping out fromballs of clay.



Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolo...oodle-celebrates-Arthur-Clokey-and-Gumby.html

 

[JasonBegheFanGirl]

I noticed that on Google this morning when opening my Off Topix bookmark. Very clever how they can do that with Google. Happy birthday Arthur Clokey!

 

[Evil Eye]

I saw it... does it do anything besides popping up when you click them?

 

[Jazzy]

I saw it... does it do anything besides popping up when you click them?

Did you try it?

 

[Evil Eye]

I did, can't seem to get them to do anything other than unrolling, playing some animation and turning back into balls again.

 

[DrLeftover]

[font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]He also did Davey and Goliath.... ... well. He DID do it.



[font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]And the technique is still used today.



[font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]There are two ways to do 'live' animation, as versus using CGI, Clay-mation on the small scale and Ray Harryhausen's way. (more on that here: http://themediadesk.com/files9/godzilla.htm )



[font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]And to me, their ways look a lot better than computerized graphics usually do.