Illustration & Animation (MA/PgD/PgC)

Imagination is a powerful force, able to create and configure new ideas and develop dreams for both the individual and humanity as a whole. This master’s degree course provides illustrators and animators with the skills and knowledge to effectively harness this power in their unique practice and their proposed project. 

• The MA in Illustration and Animation at Cardiff Met will appeal to graduates of any discipline of the visual arts, as well as professionals looking to sharpen their critical and theoretical skills.
• You will explore the role of the illustrator or animator through speculative methods in a transdisciplinary environment.
• Through a combination of self-directed studio practice, lectures, seminar sessions, and reading groups, you will be closely and individually guided in the exploration of your own practice through your proposed project, as a critical and re-directive process.
• We look to recruit brave, speculative, imaginative, and dedicated creative graduates who share our leading-edge-research concern for illustration and/or animation, and our instinct to imagine and explain.
• ​The role of the illustrator or animator is not ephemeral, temporary or mere entertainment. It is ecological, cultural, political and technological, challenging the momentum of the twenty-first century. Illustrators and animators must deploy their skills and imagination to respond to the wider political and cultural climate with more urgency and vigour than ever.
• This course of learning is driven by the student's self-defined project. To support this, each student is allocated a Personal Tutor and an additional subject-specialist member of staff from within the School. Together they form the Supervisory Team.
• The nature of the discipline is such that the course will rely on skilled practitioners as the key facilitators of learning, and, reflecting this, a variety of delivery mechanisms will be deployed. However, they will all have a common focus in that they will seek to develop the skills of students as proactive and reflective independent learners.

As a part of this programme students will study the following modules:

Semester 1

• In Semester 1 you will undertake two integrated parallel modules: Critique, Test, & Reframe and Methodologies.

The Critique, Test, & Reframe module is bespoke to the programme, designed to cultivate your ability to position your ideas within a critical framework that highlights issues arising within contemporary Illustration and Animation and beyond whilst advancing your scholarship in your chosen area of research to inform a research proposal.

• ART7778 Critique, Test, & Reframe (40 credits)
• ART7771 Context andMethodologies Part 1 (20 credits)

Semester 2

• In Semester 2 you will undertake two integrated parallel common modules: Idea and Contexts.

These modules are designed to support continued advanced scholarship to contextualise and put into action the research proposal you developed in Semester 1 in relation to global, ethical, social and political concerns.

• ART7773 Idea (40 credits)
• ART7772 Context and Methodologies Part 2(20 credits)

Semester 3

• In Semester 3 you will undertake one module: Output. The module is comprised of two integrated activities equivalent to 60 credits.
• The Output module consolidates the research findings through the realisation of your major project to form a curated exhibition (June/July) and a written paper or article. (September).

The MA Illustration & Animation exhibition will showcase your practical work consolidating your creative vision.

• ART7774 Output (60 credits)

Exit points

• On completing 60 credits in total students may be awarded a Postgraduate Certificate.
• On completing 120 credits in total students may be awarded a Postgraduate Diploma.
• On completing 180 credits in total students will be awarded a Master's Degree

Assessment

The learning outcomes are assessed within the modules through a variety of methods including essays, presentations and project work etc, as seen in individual module descriptors.

• Assessment takes place at strategic points in the academic year to enable and support your continued development. Group critiques and tutorials offer continuous feedback opportunities. Peer and self-assessment is used extensively.

Employability & Careers

• The MA Illustration & Animation programme enables students to enhance their careers as, or to become, established illustrators, artists, or animators, leading towards a career, a PhD, or to a Professional Doctorate in either art or design. Cardiff School of Art and Design offers Professional Doctoral programs in both Art and Design.
• The MA Illustration & Animation programme is designed to enable students to achieve the attributes of greater flexibility, adaptability, and individual responsibility and autonomy as professional artists or researchers. The course aims to develop individuality, creativity, self-reliance, initiative, and the ability to perform in rapidly changing environments as well as increasing competence with research skills and methods which will make graduates highly employable as academics and/or researchers, or enable them to develop an active and sustained practice as illustrators and/or animators.
• The MA Illustration & Animation course enables graduates, mid-career and professional practitioners from within and outside of the disciplines of Illustration & Animation to negotiate and examine visual communication strategies of practice whilst being able to create their own hybrids of practice that can further enhance the territory that illustration and/or animation can occupy.
• All students receive individual PDP tutorials to support employability and life-long learning. Students will be expected to maintain learning journals evidencing continuous visual documentation that integrates opportunities for self-reflection in order to help them develop as effective and confident learners.
• At the conclusion of the programme, a very high percentage of MA graduates establish or continue their professional practice, enabled by the links they have made with design studios or organisations associated with the visual arts and design. 

Some elect to continue with their Illustration & Animation studies at CSAD by undertaking a PhD.