The Valentine's Day "Google Doodle" was seen today by millions of people who logged on to the world's most popular search engine.

A Lancaster County native, Michael "Lippy" Lipman, brought the Doodle to life.

A 1977 Hempfield High School graduate, Lipman, who now lives in Mill Valley, Calif., animated the Doodle, a 90-second, wordless cartoon that features a determined little boy who tries to capture the heart of a jump-roping little girl.

It's the latest in a series of Doodles, where Google positions drawings and interactive features on its logo to commemorate holidays and other special events.

Since leaving Lancaster two years after high school, Lipman, 52, has made a career as a freelance artist, doing work for the network Nick Jr., Fox Animation and the educational toy company LeapFrog.

Google contacted him about four weeks ago to work on the Doodle, and he jumped at the opportunity.

"It's the biggest audience likely I will ever have," he said. "When Google calls and says, 'Drop everything. We've got a project that will be seen by hundreds of millions of people,' you do it."

Lipman is the son of the late Frances and Stan Lipman, who was a sculptor, artist and special education teacher at Manheim Township. Trained by old-school animators, Lipman said he enjoys the storytelling capabilities of cartoons, particularly wordless ones like the Google Doodle.

Designed and written by illustrator Willie Real, the Doodle shows a little boy offering a succession of Valentine gifts — candy, a flower, a balloon animal, a magician's hat, a pie, a deep-sea diving helmet — to an indifferent little girl. Finally, he captures her heart with a jump rope, which they share.

The only sound comes from Tony Bennett singing "Cold, Cold Heart."

Lipman spent more than 200 hours working on the Doodle, saying, "I'd pour some coffee and then, the next thing I knew, it's 11 p.m. and I'm going to bed."

Google reached out to Lipman, whose animation work also has appeared on the Internet cartoons "Happy Tree Friends."

He also animated "Bedtime Lullaby,"  a short commissioned by the producers of the Nick Jr. show "Yo Gabba Gabba."

But Lipman thinks it was his work on his own animated short, "Cro-Marmot," a "Happy Tree Friends" cartoon, that captured Google's eye.

Lipman has developed a host of skills as an animator and through working on the web. He does a live webcast called "The Tequila Whisperer Show" and also has done the voiceover for Nutty, a squirrel with a maniacal laugh who is a Happy Tree Friend.

"He is a sugar fiend," Lipman said, laughing and imitating the staccato giggle of the crazy rodent. "Those voiceover sessions were completely marvelous. The director would say, 'Now a whole candy machine falls on you … Go!' "

Lipman first honed his love of comics and drawing while growing up on Helena Drive in East Hempfield Township.

It was here he first saw the work of the underground artist R. Crumb in Zap Comix, bought at Ye Olde Bookstore in Lancaster.

"It completely turned my brain inside-out," he said.

Lipman lived next door to his cousins, Lester and Morris Lipman, who both still live in Lancaster County. The two were like brothers to him, he said.

"Lester and I used to lie on the floor together and copy comic books," he said. "I was always trying to be as good as Les."

Upon graduation from Hempfield, Lipman went to Millersville University but then, after two years, packed up a Volkswagen Beetle and drove across the country to California, where he graduated from UCLA.

He lived and worked in Manhattan for a while before moving back to California, where he lives with his wife, Susan, and his 16-year-old daughter, Anna.

"My whole goal was to get to San Francisco from the time I was 13," he said. "Sometimes, when I drive across the Golden Gate Bridge, I chuckle to myself in my car. Sometimes I feel like I have to pinch myself."

He and his family still regularly visit Lancaster. He communicates with Hempfield High School friends on Facebook and appreciates his local roots.

"Lancaster has a particular beauty that will never leave me," he said.

"It gave me a grounding, into a fundamental truth about people. I felt like the people that I grew up with in Lancaster were genuine, in a very unselfconscious way.

"I think about them more than you would think.

"There comes a time when we say, 'We miss family. We must get back to Lancaster.' "

cstauffer@lnpnews.com