Ashley Thorpe was born in Inverness, Scotland in 1972 yet grew up in Devon, England. After studying Fine art / Film in Canterbury Ashley relocated to Manchester where he worked briefly for the BBC. After a number of years pursuing illustration in London and a brief sojourn in Athens,Greece as a comic artist, Ashley returned to his Devonshire roots in 2005, and focused all his energies upon creating a series of animated shorts using neglected aspects of English mythology as inspiration and source material.
So far there have been four ‘Penny Dreadful’ animations: ‘The Vampire‘ 2002 (featuring a cameo by Derren Brown), ‘Scayrecrow‘ 2008 (winner of the Media Innovation Award 2009 and The Judges Award at ‘Horror UK’ 2009) and ‘The Screaming skull’ 2008 (nominated at Raindance for Best UK Short Film 2009 and winner of Best Animated short at the ‘The Night of Horrors’ Film festival Sydney 2010). The most recent film – ‘The Hairy Hands’ (2009) – based on a Dartmoor legend and featuring voiceover work from Doug Bradley (‘Hellraiser’), Nicholas Vince (‘Hellraiser’) and BBC DJ Jo Loosemore, has reaped critical acclaim from periodicals such as Fangoria and Rue Morgue magazine. In 2010 after receiving the ‘Visionary award’ at the ‘Buried Alive!’ film festival Atlanta, Ashley started work on the fifth in the Penny Dreadful series: ‘Spring Heel Jack’.
