Gumbasia

Gumbasia is a 3-minute short film released on September 2, 1953, the first clay animation produced by Art Clokey. He used the same technique to create the classic characters Gumby and Davey and Goliath.

Production
Clokey created Gumbasia while a student at the University of Southern California under the direction of Slavko Vorkapić. In his father's garage, he worked the clay on a ping-pong table. The film is a surreal short of pulsating shapes and lumps of clay set to jazz music in a homage of Walt Disney's Fantasia.

Gumbasia was created in a style Vorkapić taught, called Kinesthetic Film Principles and described as "massaging of the eye cells". Based on camera movements and stop-motion editing, this provides much of the look and feel of Gumby films.