Home | Movies By Year | Movies from 1955
Gumbasia
Buy Gumbasia now from AmazonFirst, read the Wikipedia article. Then, scroll down to see what other TopShelfReviews readers thought about the movie. And once you've experienced the movie, tell everyone what you thought about it.
Wikipedia article
'Gumbasia' is a 3-minute short film released on September 2, 1953, the first clay animation produced by Art Clokey, who went on to create the classic characters 'Gumby' and 'Davey and Goliath', using the same technique.
Production
Clokey created 'Gumbasia' while studying at the University of Southern California under the direction of Slavko Vorkapi. He used a ping-pong table in his father's garage as the surface upon which to work the clay. The film was a surreal short of pulsating shapes and lumps of clay set to jazz music in a homage of Walt Disney's 'Fantasia'.
Summary
'Gumbasia' was created in a style Vorkapi taught called Kinesthetic Film Principles. Described as "massaging of the eye cells" this technique, based on camera movements and stop-motion editing, is responsible for much of the look and feel later seen in Gumby films.
When Clokey showed 'Gumbasia' to film producer Sam Engel in 1955, Engel decided to fund a 15-minute short film that became the first Gumby episode"Gumby Goes to the Moon".
Impact
A TV series based on the short, titled 'Fun in Gumbasia', was scheduled for release in mid-2017.
References
Buy Gumbasia now from Amazon
<-- Return to movies from 1955