MA (Animation)

Ma animation explores both the theory and practice of animation across a broad range of experimental visual media. 

Applying for more than 1 course

• From October 2024, you can only apply for a maximum of 3 postgraduate courses each year at UAL (excluding online or low-residency courses and Graduate Diplomas).

Why choose this course at London College of Communication

• Artists as authors: You’ll use course projects to explore and position your practice as a filmmaker, animator and moving image artist in an informed and progressive manner.
• Critical community: You’ll develop the tools to analyse and understand visual history and culture through project groups, seminars, study trips and workshops.
• Building networks: You’ll enhance your career potential by engaging with guest experts, and access postgraduate resources, events and opportunities through the wider UAL community.
• Advanced learning: Encouraged to work independently, you’ll manage your own development and consider possibilities offered by working at a higher academic level.
• Connecting resources to contexts: With access to outstanding technical facilities, library catalogues and archival collections, you’ll be led by processes of making - developing work for professional contexts while preparing to progress as an artist, animator, director, author or academic.

Course overview

• MA Animation explores both theory and practice, giving you the tools to express your creative ideas using a range of visual media.
• In an era with unparalleled opportunities for skilled visual communicators, and with advancing technologies changing how the moving image is experienced by audiences, we teach animation as an experimental visual practice .
• You’ll be encouraged to test boundaries and experiment to find your own creative voice. You’ll explore meaningful themes while learning how to engage with audiences through multi-disciplinary approaches and outlining critical ideas in visual culture, drawing reference to contemporary, personal, social, ethical, cultural, political, religious and environmental issues.

What to expect

• Develop accomplished skills in animation practice, evidenced in a portfolio of work.
• Test creative ideas within a critical framework.
• Learn skills of team-working, reflecting workflows of professional practices.
• Develop a deeper knowledge of the theory that underpins your practice.

Industry experience and opportunities

• Enterprise and employability are central to the design of the course, enabling you to develop your creative, technical and academic skills, and to apply these to your own creative practice.
• Where possible, you may have opportunities to work on projects such as live briefs, industry partnerships, or a combination of activities.

Mode of study

• MA Animation is offered in full-time mode and runs for 45 weeks over 15 months, with a break over the summer. You will be expected to commit an average of 40 hours per week to your course, including teaching hours and independent study.

Course units

• In response to the Climate Emergency, UAL has embedded responsible practices within the curriculum. We shaped our courses around principles of social and racial justice, and environmental sustainability that ensure learning outcomes reflect the urgent need to equip you with the understanding, skills, and values for ethical practice and empower you to work towards an equitable future.
• This MA course is divided into five units. Each unit is credit-rated. The minimum unit size is 20 credits. The total credits for this course is 180 credits.

Autumn, term 1
Experiment: Creative Practice (20 credits)

• In Term 1 you will explore a range of technical and conceptual approaches to animation by producing short-form animation tests. This unit aims to support the development on your individual voice as an animation practitioner.
• You'll engage in experimental animation process and practice, developing your distinct visual voice. This is underpinned by critical study that significantly expands your understanding of the themes that animation can address in a critical context, and by a technical programme that ensures you are able to experiment widely with various animation techniques.

Analyse: Informed Practice (20 credits)

• In this unit, you will engage in a programme of theoretical seminars that explore the specific cinematic underpinning of animation culture and practice.
• This forms the technical and conceptual basis for the subsequent units of the course.

Spring, term 2
Collaborative Unit (20 Credits)

• You’ll have the opportunity to engage in a specific collaboration with a related course or an external partner. Collaborative partners may include fellow postgraduate students at LCC or UAL, postgraduate students at other Higher Education Institutions, and external organisations such as companies, cultural institutions, community groups, NGOs and charities.

Create: Personal Project (60 credits)

• In this unit, you'll develop and produce a short animation or a body of experiments that form a coherent project - exploring a range of technical and conceptual approaches to the workflow of professional animation production.
• Working from concept, research and development to pre-production, production and post-production, you'll outline a critical idea or theme that draws reference to a range of contemporary, personal, social, ethical, cultural, political religious and/or environmental issues.

Summer and Autumn, terms 3 and 4 
Propel: Professional Futures (60 credits)

• You’ll bring together the knowledge, skills and experience gained on the course to produce a self-directed, collaborative project and associated critical investigation.

If, during the course of your studies, you are unable to continue and you decide to exit the course, you may get one of these two possible exit awards:

• Postgraduate Certificate will be awarded on successful completion of the first 60 credits.
• Postgraduate Diploma will be awarded on successful completion of the first 120 credits.

Learning and teaching methods

• Lectures/large group learning and peer learning
• Workshop and seminar learning
• Co–creation seminars
• Academic tutorials
• Individual and group critiques 
• Individual project work
• Self-Directed learning
• Assessed assignments
• Technical workshops
• Demonstrations

Assessment methods

• Portfolio of work
• Prepared writing
• Crits and presentations

Careers

• Graduates of MA Animation will be equipped to work in an increasingly technologically informed and interdisciplinary design world, with in-depth skills in the following areas: animation and animation production both 3D and 2D visual communication, narrative and sequential image making, typography, and time-based design as well as having a portfolio of personal work to enable you to seek work as a commercial animation director.
• A significant proportion of graduates from this course will want to practice as commercial animators.