Hidden in a small garage in an obscure and wooded corner of SeaTac are miniature cities and gardens inhabited by countless people, many smaller than your pinky finger.

These are the clay creations of 60-year-old animator, Bruce Bickford.

His garage is filled from top to bottom with what he estimates to be 30 to 40 years of work.

While Bickford can do wonders with a pencil and paper, he is best known for his clay animation, or claymation, particularly his collaborations with offbeat musician Frank Zappa.

His work with Zappa escalated him to cult fame in the 1970s, as his animations accompanied Zappa's music in films such as "Baby Snakes," "The Amazing Mr. Bickford," and "Dub Room Special."

Although this may be his resume booster, the animator confesses that he and Zappa didn't really get along, nor did he even get to see him much, although Zappa did "love my stuff," Bickford said.

"I was on my own pretty much [while Zappa] was out on tour or else in the studio," he said. On his own, Bickford would come up with images that would accompany Zappa's music - images such as a clay human figure morphing into inconceivable deformed shapes, or a car chase though a forest in which trees come alive with evil grins.

Those days have come and gone, but the soft-spoken Bickford still wakes up every day in his modest SeaTac home and conceives new stories and animations, most of them filed away in three boxes. On folder tabs are titles such as a "Mars," "Space Cowboys," "Savage Word," and many more.

According to Bickford, the three boxes contain 170 stories, many still in rough stages.

"Each one could be a movie or a 'Twilight Zone' kind of TV series," he said with a glimmer of hope in his eyes.

Bickford said he puts in many hours each day on animating and writing.

"If I had a manager, I could get a lot more done," he said. "A lot of my art could be in art galleries, but it takes awhile for them to take you seriously."

Bickford confesses, "Management - the nuts and bolts of things - I'm not good at. I should keep in better contact with certain people, but that's not my strong suit."

In spite of this difficulty, Bickford said he just tries "to push anything else aside and do animation."

Bickford has enjoyed some exposure, though, with a DVD release in April of his 1988 claymation film, "Prometheus' Garden," a 28-minute piece in which Bickford had total creative control.

In addition, he was the subject of the 2004 documentary, "Monster Road," which won two awards and much critical acclaim at various film festivals throughout the country.

"It got more people aware that I'm still working, and a lot of people who have never seen my stuff before knew about it," Bickford said.

However, the animator said that gaining more fans isn't his priority, besides "the ones who can actually do something [with animation]."

His main priority is to get what he calls "the top people" of the animation industry interested in his work, which has been tough.

Bickford has met a few top animators throughout his career, including Henry Selick, the director of "Nightmare before Christmas."

However, he wasn't interested in Bickford's work. "Directors are sensitive about everything being just their style," Bickford said, also adding that many animators thought his style was just "a little too different."

Much of Bickford's animation contains scenes of human disembowelment and armies of matchstick-sized people dressed in intricate armor or nothing at all.

Bickford credits these unusual images to an "overly active imagination," with some inspiration from world events.

"I'm hoping people will want more of it... and more producers will get interested and work with me on bigger projects," he said.

If a promising chance does come along - similar to his Zappa days - Bickford would not hesitate to take it.

Until then, he quietly sits in his SeaTac home, making the images in his head come alive, waiting for his next big break to come along.

(Judy Vue is a student in the University of Washington Department of Communications News Laboratory.)