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Overview

The Illustration and Animation MA expands digital and physical knowledge of your craft, helping you find your own ‘voice’ and style.

If you are seeking to enhance your professional portfolio and understanding of emerging practice, we offer a vibrant creative community environment in which you should progress your personal research and practice to make your own unique contribution to the arena of illustrative and animated visual communication.

The course explores illustration, publishing, photography, image generation and animation. While you develop your talent, both conceptually and technically, we help you achieve a deeper understanding of your role as a visual interpreter and of the importance of adapting to market needs and to a developing field.

We will encourage you to develop a unique visual signature and a compelling visual voice that will help you to effectively communicate with intended audiences; both essential for success in professional practice.

Course information

Drawing and the visual expression of narrative – or storytelling – lie at the heart of this programme. We believe that the use of hybrid approaches and high-level crafting should inform the handmade mark, the filmic image and the created artefact and you will often find yourself working with mixed media.

Our MA covers a broad spectrum of media, including physical paper or other material-based leaves within books, magazines, newspapers and posters, as well as computer, video or projection screens and stereoscopic viewing systems. You will explore and redefine the application of such media as a means of conveying and explaining information, entertainment and aesthetics within a broad range of contexts such as the medical, botanical, scientific, technical, social, cultural and ethical.

Through practical exploration and reflection of digital and traditionally physical forms you will develop an appropriate synergy between practice and theory, establishing your specialist signature of work. Your final project will be tailored to your own area of professional practice and your personal creative passion, culminating with an exhibition of your work in the end-of-year MA Degree Show.

Career prospects

National and international graduate career prospects are many and varied and include education, curation, film and television, games disciplines, print and publishing, animation, film, scientific and technical illustration, storyboarding and character generation in 2D and 3D for traditional and emergent media.

We help you develop a wide range of transferrable skills associated with the use of information gathering, communication technology, professional practice, time management, project management and self-promotion. This could open up career opportunities that include education, television production and web-based media. You may also wish to continue your studies at PhD level or to establish a freelance business.