Art Clokey, whose animated clay figure Gumby became a pop culture icon, died January 8 reports the Los Angeles Times. He was 88.

Clokey’s 1953 experimental film, “Gumbasia,” used stop-motion clay animation set to a lively jazz tempo. It became the inspiration for the subsequent Gumby TV show when Sam Engel, the president of 20th Century Fox…saw the film and asked Clokey to produce a children’s television show based on the idea.

In the 1960s, Clokey created and produced the Christian TV series “Davey and Goliath.”