There was a story in the paper yesterday that Art Clokey, the creator of Gumby, had died. He was aged 88. For the youngsters, Gumby was a green clay figure that featured in 233 episodes on US (and Oz) television over 35 years from 1955. Clokey reportedly named Gumby after the sticky mud he used to play with as a child, known in Michigan as "gumbo".
Gumby episodes were produced using the laborious process known as claymation. This involves clay or plasticine figures being moved slightly and photographed each time an alteration is made. After thousands of movements and shots, the images are played one after and another to form a continuous moving feature. This was the process used to make the Australian Harvie Krumpet, which won the Oscar for best animated short film in 2003.
In a world now dominated by CGI and computer special effects, it probably seems unbelievable that people made movies using such stop motion techniques. Prior to CGI, special effects in movies were frequently carried out using stop-motion with models. When you see monsters and dinosaurs fighting in various movies or King Kong swiping at planes in the original 1933 movie, you are watching painstaking stop motion photography using models moved a tiny bit each time and photographed.
Gumby episodes were produced using the laborious process known as claymation. This involves clay or plasticine figures being moved slightly and photographed each time an alteration is made. After thousands of movements and shots, the images are played one after and another to form a continuous moving feature. This was the process used to make the Australian Harvie Krumpet, which won the Oscar for best animated short film in 2003.
In a world now dominated by CGI and computer special effects, it probably seems unbelievable that people made movies using such stop motion techniques. Prior to CGI, special effects in movies were frequently carried out using stop-motion with models. When you see monsters and dinosaurs fighting in various movies or King Kong swiping at planes in the original 1933 movie, you are watching painstaking stop motion photography using models moved a tiny bit each time and photographed.
I therefore commend to you a marvellous Christmas claymation short video I came across on YouTube. It is apparently from a show called Will Winton’s Christmas Celebration and features the Paris Bellharmonic Orchestra.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5m9_LXNOYM
I loved it, but watch to the end. Also at the end is a joke using the line “His face rings a bell”.
