Arthur "Art" Clokey (born Arthur Charles Farrington) was a pioneer in the popularization of stop motion clay animation, best known as the creator of the character Gumby and the original voice of Pokey. Clokey's career began in 1955 with a film experiment called Gumbasia, which was influenced by his professor, Slavko Vorkapich, at the University of Southern California. Clokey and his wife Ruth subsequently came up with the clay character Gumby and his horse Pokey, who first appeared in the Howdy Doody Show, and later got their own series The Adventures of Gumby, with which they became a familiar presence on American television. The characters enjoyed a renewal of interest in the 1980s when actor and comedian Eddie Murphy parodied Gumby in a skit on Saturday Night Live. In the 1990s Gumby: The Movie was released, sparking even more interest.