Ashley Thorpe

Ashley Thorpe was born in Inverness in 1972 yet grew up in Devon. After studying Fine art / Film in Canterbury Ashley relocated to Manchester where he worked for the BBC; simultaneously working in equipment dispatch and doing freelance graphics on such productions as the 'Fortean times' inspired 'Weird Almanac' 2002 (for producer Gerard Barry). By 2003 he was pursuing illustration in London where aswell as a number of commissions for Headpress / Critical vision publishing Ashley also did the odd bit of freelance TV graphic work for productions such as Derren Brown's 'Trick of the mind (including exterior graphics on the Arcade machine for the controversial 'Zombie arcade game' episode Episode #2.4 2005). Following a brief sojourn in Athens,Greece as a comic artist Ashley returned to his roots in 2004, and focused all his energies upon creating a series of animated shorts using neglected aspects of English mythology as source material. So far there have been four 'Penny dreadful' animations: 'The Vampire' 2002 (featuring a 'blink and you miss it' cameo by Derren Brown), 'Scayrecrow' 2008 (winner of the project green-light bursary awarded by Devon county council in association with Exeter Phoenix), 'The Screaming skull' 2008 (winner of the Digital media bursary awarded by Exeter city council in association with 'Animated Exeter' and subsequently nominated Best UK Short film at Raindance 2009) and 'The Hairy Hands' 2010 (featuring VO by Doug Bradley). In November 2010 the Director was awarded the 'Visionary Award' at the 'Buried Alive Film Festival' in Atlanta. There are (as of Aug 2011) another short in pre-production - 'Borley Rectory' and the Director's first feature - the highly anticipated 'Spring Heel Jack'. In 2010 due to the reputation his animations had garnered, Ashley was invited to write for horror periodical 'Fangoria Magazine' and has since gone on to provide the magazine with numerous interviews, articles and cover art - often with a Brit-Horror theme. 2010 also saw Ashley's first foray into radio - 'The Demon Huntsman' written for Glass Eye Pix's 'Tales From Beyond the Pale' - a series of horror radio dramas.