Ashley Simpson (No, Not THAT Ashley Simpson) on Phineas and Ferb

I have been a huge fan of the Disney Television Animation hit show airing on both Disney Channel and Disney XD Phineas and Ferb, created by Dan Povenmire and Jeff "Swampy" Marsh. Besides Mickey Mouse, it is my favorite Disney TV show and it is the only original Disney Channel show currently airing that is not created by a CalArts alum. To me, that means something. Some of the artists working on the show are CalArts alumni, but I digress.
I watched their most recent episode "Act Your Age," a special half-hour episode set ten years in the future, where a teenaged Phineas must decide between two colleges while grappling with the discovery that Isabella has had a crush on him since they were kids. Ferb and the gang try to bring the two together so they can admit their true feelings for each other before Isabella leaves for school. As I watched the credits, I noticed a name under character designers that caught my attention, Ashley Simpson (no relation to recording artist Ashley Simpson). Her name hasn't appeared on an episode before and I was curious to know who she was, so I looked her up (I do this to a lot of names I see in credits). It turns out there is a story to how she got to work on that episode.
This 25-year-old amateur artist was already a Phineas and Ferb super fan. Ashley Simpson is a Canadian story artist and recent 2014 animation graduate from Emily Carr University of Art and Design with a Bachelor in Media Arts from Vancouver. One fateful day, she met the creators at San Diego Comic Con two years ago and gave them a piece of fan art with Phineas and Ferb as teenagers. They liked it so much that they held onto it. Dan explained, “Hers just had so much life to it; I felt like this is somebody who should be working in animation.” When the crew decided to make an episode with a futuristic storyline of Phineas and Ferb as teenagers, Dan remembered that piece of artwork and asked one of the handlers to retrieve it, so he and Swampy can contact her. They found her DeviantArt account and found out she did a lot of great previous work of Phineas and Ferb as teens. When they finally reached her, she was a bit skeptical at first because she didn't believe it was Dan - Ashley's friends asked Dan to tweet it to prove the whole thing wasn't a hoax.

After she realized Dan was well, the rest was history. The creators officially hired her to fly over to Glendale and create character designs while still in art school. Dan and Swampy didn’t stray from Ashley’s vision either; the character designs for the episode were completely inspired by her original artwork. On designing Phineas and Ferb as soon-to-be college freshman, Dan said, “I felt like I should give her the first shot at designing these characters because I felt like anything else that we did, I would try to push it more towards the way she had done it because I liked her take on them so much.” It was a fun experience for both her and the creators to work on the episode. She continues creating fanart on DeviantArt and working freelance, recently finished an animated fire safety program which she received through connections with Dan and Swampy. “I just love doing fan art. So many people frown on it, but I got a job through it because I’ve known for a while that creators like to see what fans can make with their characters,” she says. “It also gives me practice, because I’ll make original characters that go in that universe that I can pull out and put in my own stories.”

I am glad to see Ashley's dream come true and hope to see what she does next. As she put it, “It just feels magical when you have a dream that you’re just striving for. It’s a lot of work, but once you’re done, you see your project on television or on the web… it’s the best feeling in the world.”

Here are sites that feature Ashley's artwork:
Blog: http://ashleymichellesimpson.weebly.com/
LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/ashleymmsimpson
DeviantArt: http://kicsterash.deviantart.com/
Tumblr: http://imaginashon.tumblr.com/
             http://ashleymmproductions.tumblr.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/kicsterash
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AshMichelleSims
Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/ashleymmsimpson
Instagram: https://instagram.com/ash_michelle_sims/