Ash Thorp is a graphic designer, illustrator, artist, and creative director for a multitude of media, including feature films, commercial enterprises, and print.
Ashley Livingston Thorp, more commonly referred to as Ash Thorp, was born March 1983 in Oceanside, California. His early childhood consisted of numerous travels across many different states and countries, but ultimately, he spent the majority of his childhood in Hawaii and considers that tropical paradise his true home.
From a young age, Ash naturally gravitated to drawing and would spend countless hours creating illustrations, inspired by comics and classic films, like Star Wars. His passion for art, combined with his love of feature films, naturally led him to pursue a career in the film industry. With an exceptional style of his own, Ash quickly gained recognition for his astounding UI (user interface) graphics in Ender’s Game and Total Recall. Thorp has also contributed to the design direction and concepts for Person of Interest, Prometheus, X-men First Class, the Amazing Spiderman 2, and many more titles. His work has been featured in various publications, such as Motionographer, ImagineFX, Kotaku, and Art of VFX.
Compelled to give back to others, Ash Thorp has traveled the globe to speak at conferences and help share his journey and industry lessons with other creatives. He also wanted to find another way to personally share his experiences and connect artists from all over the world together, so he created The Collective Podcast distributed on iTunes. Thorp aimed the podcast at exploring the struggles of work/life balance and to share the experiences of influential creatives from all realms of media, including (but not limited to) designers, illustrators, visual effects artists, writers, painters, and programmers.
Ash Thorp’s career is a continuous rotation of roles from designer to creative director. He is fueled by a tremendous internal drive to develop his own signature imprint on the industry. His first directorial debut started with the assembly of an international team for his visionary Ghost in the Shell tribute titled Project 2501. Ash then wrote and directed the main title for OFFF Barcelona 2014 alongside his close friend and acclaimed director, Anthony Scott Burns. In 2015, he was requested once again to assemble an international team of designers and create the title sequence for FITC Tokyo, which instantly gained monumental attention, including selection as a Vimeo Staff Pick.
Through his multitude of career roles, Thorp still finds the time to maintain his connection with his early childhood love of drawing. He recently created a graphic series titled Lost Boy, which is in further development alongside his co-director, Anthony Burns. PostPanic Pictures announced that they will be producing a concept short for Lost Boy with an aimed release date in 2016.
