BA (Hons) Animation & Games
Our BA (Hons) Animation & Games degree equips you for the competitive animation and gaming market and rapidly expanding environment in the entertainment industry, projected to reach a global worth of £200 billion by 2025.
The School of Arts + Media presents BA (Hons) Animation & Games
<ul><li>Industry-Ready Expertise: Graduates emerge with expertise in storytelling, prototyping, and problem-solving, perfectly primed for fulfilling roles in the dynamic and demanding entertainment industry.</li><li>Animation Degrees and Courses: Access comprehensive education through our animation degree, 3D animation courses, computer animation degree, and 2D animation course.</li><li>VFX and Animation Course: Benefit from our industry partnership with Real Ideas, developing and screening 360-degree content in Europe’s largest immersive dome, compatible with VR, AR, mixed reality, animation, and games software.</li><li>Express Creativity Freely: In the 2023 National Student Survey, 100% of BA (Hons) Animation & Games students agreed that they felt free to express their ideas, opinions, and beliefs.</li><li>Specialised Career Paths: Choose between animation and game arts, tailoring your education to your career goals in the entertainment sector.</li><li>Animation University and Game Design University: Our programs offer comprehensive training, from animation courses in the UK to a focused animation design course, ensuring you gain relevant skills for the industry.</li><li>3D Animation Degree and Computer Animation Degree: Master the latest techniques and technologies in animation, preparing you for diverse roles in the field.</li></ul>
Arts University Plymouth gave me the opportunity to spend my days studying art, improving my skills, and honing my thinking for the creative industries. I was surrounded by extremely inspiring people, and being able to bounce concepts around and share skills was an essential part of my learning. I soon came to realise that being an artist really is a viable career path.
- Leon Tyler, Creative Director for award-winning global EdTech company Macademia and former BAFTA juror | BA (Hons) Animation graduate
<p dir="ltr">Whether your interest is in film, television, video games, online content, VFX, motion graphics or VR, we’ll help you enter the market with the knowledge and skills necessary for a leading role in the industry. In our state-of-the-art multimedia studio environment, you can explore the full range of the drawing, modelling, editing, rendering, and scripting techniques, giving you an unrivalled opportunity to take a multi-faceted view of the animation and games world.</p>
<p>Through storytelling, prototyping, and problem-solving, you'll develop projects and lead interdisciplinary contexts, gaining valuable knowledge applicable to multinational organisations or small studios. With courses in animation and games, along with content linked to entertainment designs, integrated studies, and humanities and arts, you'll cultivate a comprehensive approach to creating dynamic animations and engaging games.</p>
<p>Working within the creative incubator of our arts university, you’ll not only gain knowledge of the latest software used in the creative industry and develop collaborative skills across disciplines, but you’ll also be encouraged to develop as an emerging artist-designer with your own unique creative voice. You’ll have the opportunity to work alongside students from our award-winning Film & Screen Arts course and Film Studies, as well as collaborating with Animation and Games peers in interdisciplinary projects.</p>
<p>As a student, you will focus on concept art and visual development towards outputs such as: characters, worldbuilding, and asset creation. During your second year, you will be able to select either an animation or games career development specialism. The animation path develops students in the disciplines of character animation, storyboarding, modelling, art direction, and the principles of 2D and 3D lighting. While the game arts path prepares students to create and communicate visual concepts through 3D and 2D prototyping, iteration, and production.</p>
Nathan Hardy
<p dir="ltr">On this degree, you’ll not only gain knowledge of the latest software used in the creative industry and develop collaborative skills across disciplines, but you’ll also be encouraged to develop as an emerging artist-designer with your own unique creative voice. You’ll have the opportunity to work alongside students from our award-winning Film & Screen Arts course and Film Studies, as well as collaborating with Animation and Games peers in interdisciplinary projects. Our animation and games studio facilities are fully equipped with industry-standard hardware and software such as Unreal Engine, Substance Painter, Toon Boom, 3D Studio Max, Maya, Marmoset Toolbag, Z-Brush, and Adobe Master Suite. You’ll have your own high-spec, cloud-render enabled workstation with drawing monitors, as well as access to VR devices, cintiqs, a stop-motion studio, green screen studio, and a state-of-the-art 3D printing and scanning studio.<br /></p>
<p dir="ltr">Some of the core specialisms you’ll study include pre-production concept art for the entertainment industry, 2D and 3D world-building, drawing, environment art, environmental and particle textures, gameplay, level design, 2D and 3D character design, stop-motion animation, 2D and 3D animation, and special effects.<br /></p>
Real Ideas' immersive dome at Market Hall in Plymouth is the first of its type in Europe.
<p>You will benefit from our new industry partnership with Real Ideas, gaining access to Europe’s first-of-its-kind immersive dome which features an impressive 19.1 speaker array and 360-degree visuals projecting at 8K resolution; this state of the art facility is compatible with virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), mixed reality, animation, games software, spatial audio, 360 recorded and live-action content. Film and Animation students have recently created and screened content for the dome giving them firsthand experience of immersive, 360-degree animation, and filmmaking.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Our course team consists of professional animators, filmmakers, and researchers who will assist you in building your own professional network. We have excellent industry links in the UK and internationally, developed through annual visits to both the FMX and International Trick film festivals in Stuttgart, Germany. In recent years, our students have had work screened at Encounters (the UK’s leading short film and animation festival), visited Aardman Animation studios in Bristol, and contributed to high-profile European-funded animation initiatives, such as the Euranim video mapping project with workshops in Belgium.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The university’s annual Summer Show also provides an excellent opportunity for students from this course to engage directly with industry before launching their own careers.<br /></p>
100% of BA (Hons) Animation & Games students agreed that “during their studies, they felt free to express their ideas, opinions and beliefs.”
- National Student Survey 2023
<p>All students at Arts University Plymouth can access specialist support via our Student Support Team. Our trained advisers offer information and guidance on student finance and funding, disability support, counselling and more. <br /><br /><a href="https://www.aup.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/disability-support-and-reasonable-adjustments" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Click here</a> to read more about the support we offer.</p>
<ul><li><strong>Email: </strong><a href="mailto:admissions@aup.ac.uk">admissions@aup.ac.uk</a></li><li><strong>Instagram: </strong><a href="https://www.instagram.com/gamearts_pca/?hl=en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><strong>@</strong></a><a href="https://www.instagram.com/animation_gameart_aup/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">animation_gameart_aup</a></li></ul>
