Illustration and Animation BA (Hons)

Our illustration and animation ba explores the rich heritage and history of hand-crafted illustration and animation while also exploring the vast possibilities of the new digital age of image making and animation. 

• Our students are encouraged to engage with the world around them through live briefs, socially and globally engaged studio projects and engagement with commercial practice. Throughout the course, students have frequent opportunities to establish links with the creative industries within and beyond illustration and animation so that they can understand the expectations of the industry and the opportunities available to them.
• Across the three years of study students have the benefit of talks by prominent freelance illustrators and animators, commissioners, illustration and animation agencies and studios at all scales. The course has excellent and well-established links with culutral institutions, illustrators and animation studies that enable these employment-focused collaborations.
• Through these learning opportunities, students learn how to recognise differing audiences and identitify how to engage and communicate with them through their craft. The ability to do this is essential, whether for self-initiated projects and promoting one's own work or being able to offer commercial clients the ability to galvanise audiences and connect with a market.
• In this way graduates are prepared for demands of their ever-changing creative industry through becoming creative, inquisitive, professional, experimental, critical, resourceful, highly skilled and individually distinctive illustrators and animators.

Course modules

• The modules listed below are for the academic year 2024/25 and represent the course modules at this time. Modules and module details (including, but not limited to, location and time) are subject to change over time.

Year 1 modules

• Critical and Contextual Studies 1 (Visual Communication)
• Message and Meaning
• Skills and Principles
• Work Ready Level 4

Year 2 modules

• Critical and Contextual Studies 2 (Visual Communication)
• Skills and Enquiry
• Voice and Vision
• Work Ready Level 5

Year 3 modules

• Critical and Contextual Studies 3: Dissertation (Visual Communication)
• Major Project: Illustration and Animation
• Skills and Innovation
• Work Ready Level 6

Critical and Contextual Studies 1 (Visual Communication)
This module currently runs:
All year (September start) - Tuesday afternoon

(Core, 30 credits)

• The module aims to orient and critically engage you in the history and theory of your discipline, to examine its scope, conventions, and broader social and material context in culture and practice. The overarching purpose of this is to enable a greater ability to think through and develop your studio practice, enriching it with knowledge and ideas gained from study of the contexts in which it is framed. You will be encouraged to explore issues relevant to your own background and identity.
• The module will help you to reflect on what you see and experience, and to find connections between different ideas that have shaped your discipline. In particular, the module investigates how ideas about practice in your field might be framed, for example in relation to history, the economy, cultures, society and the environment, through both theory and practice. You will be encouraged to question received ideas and to broaden your thinking and understanding of the global and previously marginalised contexts and histories of your discipline. The current and historic practice, impacts and implications of your discipline in relation to matters of sustainability, equity and accessibility will also be a focus of your studies.
• The module will begin to introduce you to a range of academic skills needed to produce a graduate level study (a dissertation) in your final year. It will help you to develop and define your own interests, and to reflect on and take responsibility for the development of your own learning.

Study illustration and animation in a modern context

• This course embraces ongoing developments in the way illustration is practised, no longer confined to the page, but inhabiting a dynamic, three-dimensional digital world

Become a versatile maker in both artistic and commercial work

• A typical destination for graduates may be in the field of illustration, animation, advertising, film and television, publishing, immersive theatre, visual effects or art installation

Use a huge range of different mediums

• A defining feature of the course is its focus on cross-disciplinary projects