 
I've been a fan of the graphics of ZX Spectrum artist F. David Thorpe for many years now. I always loved the colourful and detailed loading screens that he drew for ZX Spectrum games released by companies like Ocean Software, Imagine and US Gold etc. There doesn't seem to be hardly any mention of Davids work on the Internet apart from an incomplete credits list on the World Of Spectrum site so I thought I would put together a webpage not only as a tribute to Davids great work on the ZX Spectrum but also as an archive of his pictures that hopefully fellow fans of his work will find of interest. I've divided this gallery into four sections - Ocean games, Imagine games, US gold games and Miscellaneous. Each section contains confirmed works by David where he is either credited on the screen, in the game information or in the Crash 'On The Screen' feature which is included at the bottom of this page. If you know of the current whereabouts of David (hopefully he is still with us!) or can clarify whether some of the unconfirmed pictures WERE actually drawn by David then please send me an EMAIL. If David himself is reading this, PLEASE get in touch! I'd love to hear from you.
 F.David Thorpe photographed in 1985 by Paul Francis
Ocean Software Pictures (Confirmed to be by F.David Thorpe)
Imagine Games Pictures (Confirmed to be by F.David Thorpe)
US Gold Pictures (Confirmed to be by F.David Thorpe)
Misc ZX Spectrum Pictures (Confirmed to be by F.David Thorpe)
Ocean Software Pictures (Unconfirmed)
US Gold Pictures (Unconfirmed)
Misc Pictures (Unconfirmed)
F.David Thorpe Pictures (De-Clashified!) Now here's an interesting idea. Andrew Laggan (he of the SCREEN$ website fame) has sent me some F.David Thorpe loading screens that he has 'de-clashed' (I.E. Removed some of the attribute problems). This is how the loading screens would have looked if the Speccy wasn't restricted to two colours per 8x8 square. To compare the de-clashed pics with the original versions simply roll your mouse over the images below.
Amstrad CPC Screens (Confirmed) In the Crash magazine 'On The Cover' feature (see below) David mentions at the end that he has just started working on the Amstrad CPC. So far I've only been able to find one confirmed loading screen on the Amstrad by David - the excellent 'Head Over Heels' loading screen. If anybody knows of any more Amstrad loading screens by David please let me know!
Amstrad CPC Screens (Unconfirmed)
"4 COMPUTER BUFFS" (David Thorpe Interview) (Thanks to David Tolley for sending me this great footage!)
CRASH MAGAZINE (On The Cover Feature)
Now you can view the F.D.Thorpe pics on a Commodore 64! The C64 is equipped with a hi-res graphics mode called 'Standard Mode' which is similar to the Speccy display (although the C64 screen has a slightly larger resolution - 320 x 256 pixels). Anyway, I thought it would be a nice idea to convert the brilliant F.D.Thorpe pictures from the Speccy into C64 standard mode screens. I did this using the "Vidi-ZX" transfer system pioneered by my C64 coding chum Jon Wells. The C64 colour palette is fairly similar to the default 8-colours of the Speccy (although not quite as vibrant!) and with a clever bit of tweaking you can also emulate the Speccy "Bright" mode using some of the extra colours in the C64 palette. You can download the C64 F.D.Thorpe picture gallery by clicking the link below. The Zip file contains two .d64 disk images that are compatible with all popular C64 emulators including WinVice and CCS64. Enjoy! ** Click HERE to download the F.David Thorpe C64 Picture Collection ** [195KB Zipped .D64 Disk Images] 
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