Ashley Thorpe
Associate Artist 2017
After a number of years working for BBC Manchester during the Commonwealth games and subsequently London and Athens doing freelance illustration, Ashley returned to his Devon roots in 2005 and focused all his energies upon creating a series of animated short films 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), Scayrecriw 2008 (winner of the Media Innovation Award 2009), The Screaming Skull 2008 (nominated Best UK Short film at Raindance 2009) and The Hairy Hands 2010 (A SWS / UK Film Council project featuring VO by Doug Bradley).
His latest production – Borley Rectory (a Carrion Film / Glass Eye Pix NYC co-venture) starring Reece Shearsmith & Julian Sands will be released in 2017.
In 2015 Ashley animated the opening Lalo Schifrin scored sequence for Neil Marshall’s (Game of Thrones, Westworld) and Axelle carolyn’s Saturn Award nominated Hollywood Horror feature Tales Of Halloween.
Ashley is also an award nominated writer for horror periodical Fangoria Magazine providing numerous interviews, articles and cover art – often with a Brit-Horror theme. In 2012 he was nominated for a prestigious ‘Rondo Award’ for his interview with Hammer director Peter Sasdy and was nominated again in 2014 for his interview with John Hurt.
2010 also saw a foray into radio – The Demon Huntsman – a half hour script written for Glass Eye Pix’s Tales From Beyond the Pale – a series of horror radio dramas which garnered rave reviews aswell as notice in such periodicals as The Wall Street Journal and Entertainment Weekly. His second radio script for the studio Dead Man’s Shoes was performed live in New York in October 2012.
Since going freelance as an animator in 2009 Ashley has regularly taught animation and film making to a variety of age groups – from primary schools to colleges – and has close ties to Cinemagic Belfast, Into Film, Animated Exeter and the Exeter Phoenix.