The Willow Glen Resident

Artistic rendering courtesy of StudioFX

'Clayming' the Future: American icons Gumby and Pokey will soon be the stars of the first-ever virtual amusement park.

Artistic team creates new 'park' with old friends on the Internet

StudioFX's latest adventure stars Gumby and Pokey

By Maggie Benson

When Gumby World springs to life at the beginning of next year, Mickey Mouse had best beware: the aging American icon could have an amusement park rival--well, at least virtually.

Using the creative efforts of two Willow Glen employees, StudioFX is hard at work on the first-ever amusement park on the Internet, featuring Gumby and Pokey, the clay figures of 1960s fame.

When the URL is assigned, park-goers can log onto www.gumbyworld.com to learn everything they ever wanted to know about the moldable dynamic duo.

"It will be very traditional," Sean Griffin, founder of the San Jose-based Studio FX, explained. "It will follow the same look and feel of Gumby and Pokey as clay characters. This site will actually be clay-based."

At the beginning of the month, StudioFX secured exclusive rights from the Prema Toy Company--founded by Art Clokey, the creator of Gumby and Pokey--to sell and promote Gumby and Pokey products through the World Wide Web.

"We chose StudioFX to take Gumby and Pokey to the Web because they understand the market and are leaders in the digital-branding space," Clokey stated in a press release. "Human values and character never become dated or archaic; manners, customs and styles do."

Developers Jay Slean and Alice Fenton, both Willow Glen residents, say the site will offer a host of innovative amenities.

Users will be able to talk online with Clokey, nose through books page by page, watch never-before-seen video clips from movies, play video games, check out the characters in 3-D and maybe even chat with them.

And of course, they'll be able to buy an unlimited amount of Gumby and Pokey merchandise, as virtual stores will be set up throughout the park--just like at Disneyland.

Among the products that will be for sale are Gumby and Pokey ties, boxer shorts, cookie jars, video clips and scenes made from molds created for the original movies.

StudioFX bills itself as "a complete-solution interactive agency"--meaning, it is creating the tools not only to advertise on the Internet, but also to perform sales transactions from it.

"The bottom line is, we are in the pursuit of making money off the Internet," Griffin said. They plan to do this "by creating Web sites that enhance or reinvent and evolve [icons in American history, such as Dr. Seuss]. That's part of our strategy. We are content-oriented. We are developing very high-level creative content. Content is king."

Why Gumby and Pokey?

"They are an American icon like Mickey Mouse," project manager Fenton explained. "They have high integrity. We're gong for icons with values for our kids."

The new site will be thoroughly retro, a design mode foreign to the Internet, creative director Slean explained.

"[StudioFX's] site now is retro; it has a Jetson feel," he added. "People come to our site, and they automatically feel comfortable. There's not all of the shocking colors."

But it's not so easy to make actual clay figures look like a clay figures on the computer--one of Slean's biggest challenges right now.

"We're trying to make Gumby look like the real thing," he explained. "Something the kids are going to want to see, as well as adults. It's very difficult to make Gumby and Pokey look like clay on the computer."

Slean, who drives a '59 Rambler, said it can be devastating when industries try too hard to change their image to look modern and cutting-edge. "New Coke, for instance. Remember what happened there?" he queried. "Change is good; just make sure you look before you leap. The stuff I create is never going to be a new Coke."

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