Gumbasia, First Music Video?:

There are still people around who think Walt Disney was an animator. He was a producer. He stopped animation in 1922 or 1923. Until I started assigning subjects for the Animator Report in my history of animation classes students kept doing reports on Charles Schultz listing him as the animator/director of the Charley Brown cartoons. (Can you say Bill Melendez?)



So it comes as no surprise that most people think Art Clokey is the stop motion animator of Gumby. He animated Gumbasia his 1953 abstract USC student film. But he wasn`t even the director on the Gumby show. He was the writer and executive producer. Veteran stop motion animator Raymond Peck was the director on the early Gumby Shorts. Here is the back story very nicely laid out by Ron Kurer`s Toon Tracker http://www.toontracker.com/gumby/gumby.htm

I`m not coming down on Clokey like I did last week on Bob Kane. Gumby is definitely Art`s baby. Gumby reflects his worldview. He created him and wrote his adventures but other people carried out his vision. There is nothing wrong with that.

But the one project he did animate was a really great film, maybe even the forerunner to the music videos (it is animated to a bongo driven Jazz beat). It is an important work and if you haven`t seen it you should. I, for one, wonder what would have happened if Art Clokey had continued to animate?