Mark "Thurop" Ashton Van Orman (born April 26, 1976) is an American cartoonist, animator, writer, producer, director, and voice actor. He worked with Cartoon Network to create and produce the animated series The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack (2008–2010), in which he voices the titular character. He made his directorial debut with The Angry Birds Movie 2 (2019).

Life and career

Van Orman was born and raised in Norfolk, Virginia. Van Orman worked for the video game company Xantera before going on to study character animation at the California Institute of the Arts. He was the storyboard artist and co-writer for Camp Lazlo, The Powerpuff Girls, and The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy. He was also the supervising producer for Adventure Time and served as one for Sanjay and Craig only in its first season. Thurop is also somewhat known for responding to much of his fans' fan art through the website DeviantArt. Van Orman has a brother named Jonny, from whom he took inspiration to start his animation career at Cartoon Network for Flapjack. He has been married to Sherri Van Orman since 1999 and has two daughters: Blossom and Hazel. Since 2013 Orman has been working on a animated series under the title North Woods, the project was initially pitched to Nickelodeon the same year, after it was passed the project was developed as potential stop-motion animated film named Black Forest, 3 years later the project was pitched to Disney Television Animation for Disney XD on 2016, development on the project was paused by Disney on 2018 and was later revived on 2021 for Disney Channel.

Upcoming films

Orman provided concept art for the film adaptation of The Little Prince. He has also announced via Twitter that he will be writing a film about vikings. In June 2024, it was announced that Orman will serve as executive producer and screenwriter for The Angry Birds Movie 3.

Inspirations

His work took inspiration from Joe Murray, Gary Larson, Jim Henson, Stephen Hillenburg, Craig McCracken, E. H. Shepard, Richard Scarry, Maurice Sendak, Mercer Mayer, Ronald Searle, Robert Crumb, Sergio Aragonés, Fleischer Studios, and his brother Jonny.

Filmography

Film

Television

As Crew

As actor