Through his work on Hollywood blockbusters, talks given across the globe and his recently launched online design classes on Learn Squared, designer Ash Thorp has proven himself a restless creative energy. At any given time, his content feed is releasing fragments of inspired moments — test images using new technology, digital sketches, ideas let loose through tortured pixels.
Thorp has been posting images to his Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr page for over a year that shows the designer playing with software and techniques new to him in interesting ways with the core subject matter being the female form and fabric. This is a classic combination used in the sketch phase — the artist following the natural flow of linen, the shift of light and flesh, of muscle taut under sheet or dress. Thorp uses this traditional modeling mode to expand and experiment within his digital realm, his tools pushed not to recreate our actual reality, but his own imagined reality.
From design work on Prometheus, Iron Man 3, Ender’s Game, to The Martian, there’s an excitement and immediacy to Thorp’s work that seeps through even that most tilled ground of tent-pole cinema. His is a constant push — a thrust towards furthering the knowledge and tools he’s already mastered. As a creator, Thorp’s eyes are constantly looking for the next thing, that next challenge to embrace. In his Learn Squared courses he may teach students how to use technology, but by observing what he creates we can learn how to not settle for the skills we already possess, but to reach beyond that. Thorp shows us that being better is possible.
Below are just a few images that he has produced between jobs.
by Ash Thorp
by Ash Thorp
by Ash Thorp
by Ash Thorp
by Ash Thorp
by Ash Thorp
by Ash Thorp
by Ash Thorp
by Ash Thorp
by Ash Thorp
by Ash Thorp
by Ash Thorp
by Ash Thorp
