Do you have a strong drawing ability and want to study concept art and develop a range of specialist skills?
This course focuses on games and animation but is also suitable for students interested in related areas such as film, comics and illustration. You will undertake project based course work supported by dedicated staff with a wealth of practical experience of both the commercial and academic worlds.Your teaching is supported by close links to industry. In previous years we have had a range of visiting lecturers – a senior concept artist from Double Negative, an art director from Ubisoft, the director of Atomhawk and representatives from Dreamworks and Microsoft. We have also had visits from a range of freelancers specialising in areas such as character design, storyboarding and matte painting. Industry experts are actively involved in setting you tasks and providing feedback
There are two routes you can choose from to gain an MA Concept Art for Games and Animation:
The postgraduate course covers specialist areas – character design, environment design and storytelling. You also focus on core drawing skills including regular life drawing classes. The course concludes with a final project – we support you to create a brief that enables you to specialise in your chosen area of interest.
You develop the cognitive and technical skills to equip you for enterprise, employment and further academic research. As a graduate, practising artist and designer or mid-career professional, you can engage in reflective creative practice at an advanced level.
Course structure
Core modules
Modules offered may vary.
How you learn
You experience a number of different approaches to learning and teaching including:
Critical reflection is key to successful problem solving and essential to the creative process. To develop your own reflective practice at an advanced level, you test and assess your solutions against criteria that you develop in the light of your research.
How you are assessed
You are assessed through the production of a portfolio of creative work and a written report. Feedback is given during lectures and tutorials, and using online methods.
From the beginning of your programme, we prepare you for a career in industry. In addition to your taught classes, we create opportunities for you to meet and network with our industry partners through events such as our ExpoSeries, which showcases student work to industry. ExpoTees is the pinnacle of the ExpoSeries with over 100 businesses from across the UK coming to the campus to meet our exceptional students, with a view to recruitment.
Advanced practice
There are a number of internship options, including:
Our postgraduate degree is designed in line with the concept of embedded employability which is complemented by the Professional Development Programme.
Studying at Christie’s Education provides an experience of ‘learning live’ at the heart of the art world. Through lectures, seminars, tutorials, visits and master classes with specialists, as well as an internships at Christie’s auction house, you will acquire practical skills and object based learning required to develop a successful art - world career.
Students are introduced and have the opportunity to work alongside a network of world class practitioners and professionals, including artists; gallerists; auction house specialists; curators; fair organisers, art lawyers and consultants. There is a very practical, ‘hands on’ ethos to teaching. International field trips have included visits to art fairs and museums in Australia, Brazil, China, Korea, Maastricht, Morocco and South Africa.
This is an intensive 15-month Master’s (MSc) designed to give you unrivalled access to the art market. It is a programme that explores the important ethical and legal aspects of working in the commercial art world at the same time as giving you the opportunity to study the History of Art.
A unique feature of this programme is that it also provides you with work experience through an integrated placement at Christie’s.
Close collaboration between Christie’s and the University of Glasgow in the design of this programme has allowed us to combine academic rigor with professional real-life experience. Case studies conducted by experts in the sector are complemented by the work placement experience within Christie’s.
This programme is for you if you are dedicated to developing a professional career working in the art market. We welcome young achievers as well as career-changers capable of understanding the challenges of the commercial art world through cross-disciplinary study at the highest level.
This Master’s Programme is structured around three areas of study,
Art-world Business Practices
Art Law
Art History and Theory
You will participate in core lecture programmes in the History of Art leading to a summative examination. This course is complemented by a seminar in the History and Theory of Art and Culture. You will experience Law through lectures and seminars delivered by professional practitioners and you will complete case studies for yourself. For the duration of the course, you will also actively participate to the life of a department within Christie’s. Your experience of the Auction Business through this placement will be augmented by visits to at least three key international Art Fairs and events (such as FIAC Paris, TEFAF Maastricht and Art Basel Hong Kong), to enable you to explore the art world in a variety of contexts.
Your dissertation takes the form of Work Placement Report and Catalogue of an auction consignment. This will enable you to bring together all three areas of your programme of study: Art History, Law and Business Practice in a single piece of work.
Thursday, 15th February: https://www.christies.edu/contact/meet-with-us.aspx
Or, book an appointment with Recruitment Officer Laura Harris.
This Masters is concerned with outlining and critically evaluating the concept of the ‘avant-garde’ both theoretically and in terms of its applicability to representative areas of 20th-century art. Dealing with art from the early twentieth century to the present, you will investigate concepts such as historical avant-garde, neo-avant-garde, and post-avant-garde, paying close attention to the theorists who have elaborated these ideas.
Closely focused on the visual and historical specificities of the subject, the core teaching will have you examining the politically oppositional and ‘transgressive’ impulses of the avant-garde.
You will interpret ‘transgression’ in the widest sense and in relation to a range of diverse historical contexts, including: the anti-art concerns of Dada; the political tensions arising from conflicts between nationalist and internationalist currents in European art of the early 20th century and the Nietzschian/Bataillean testing of the boundaries of conventional moral positions, particularly regarding sexual identity and the body.
The optional courses available are closely geared to the research interests of our staff. Their content will draw upon current exhibitions and debates.
You will take five core courses and one optional course. This is followed by a period of self-study towards a dissertation 15,000 words in length (including footnotes but excluding bibliography) and will be on a topic chosen in consultation with the tutors and the programme convenor.
You may choose from the following options in the College of Arts
Or from courses run by History of Art
Students on this programme are invited to take part in an optional study trip of approximately one week, which is funded by the student. Previous destinations include Berlin and Dublin.
Career opportunities include positions in curation, digitisation and research within museums and other cultural and heritage institutions. The programme also provides an excellent platform for you to move onto PhD studies and an academic career.
Through object-based, interdisciplinary research, this Masters programme focuses on the act of making and everything that entails. We study studio practices from a variety of disciplines, their materials and techniques, but also intentions and concept. We examine art technological sources to register the artist’s voice, and other testimonies on artistic practice, make reconstructions of historical recipes and modern techniques to understand practices, ageing and its consequences as well as other changes artworks go through. Researching this all-inclusive story of an artefact is known as technical art history. It is an exciting and rapidly growing field involving (technical) art historians, scientists, conservators while also reaching out to other disciplines such as economic and social history, history of science, anthropology and aesthetics.
Drawing upon the expertise of an interdisciplinary team, the programme will include taught and research components as well as practical workshops and work placements.
This MLitt develops your skills in object-based research, as well as examining the authenticity, attribution and dating of art works – and their change and survival. You do not need any background in science or conservation. We will provide you with the right tools to understand what science can deliver, what conservators can do, and what role you can play in this truly interdisciplinary field.
You will take five core courses and one optional course. This is followed by a period of self-study towards a dissertation 15,000 words in length (including footnotes but excluding bibliography) and will be on a topic chosen in consultation with the tutors and the programme convenor.
You may choose from the following options
Career opportunities include curatorial positions in museums and galleries, working with collections within cultural heritage organisations, or in the commercial environment of auction houses performing object-based research including technical investigation. The programme will also prepare you for a further postgraduate education in conservation or academic research.
The MA Art Gallery and Museum Studies aims to provide students with critical understandings of issues in curatorship, museology and museum management. The course considers the ways in which material culture has been represented and interpreted by historians and cultural theorists, the methodologies behind museum practice and methods of display and interpretation, and also puts theory and practice into dialogue.
Through the course, students develop critical understandings of the histories of art galleries and museums and explore and challenge key ideas that have shaped museum practice. Students will also deploy these historical and theoretical understandings to develop innovative approaches to curation, interpretation and engaging audiences.
You will develop practical skills through working on an interpretation project in our archives and collections on campus, and undertaking a negotiated work placement. Supported by the Centre for Critical Studies in Museums, Galleries and Heritage, you will gain the knowledge and skills for a successful career in the museum and art gallery sector.
You will study in the heart of a cultural hub for this diverse and vibrant region. Leeds is home to a wide variety of world-leading and innovative arts and heritage organisations, from the Royal Armouries, Opera North, West Yorkshire Playhouse and Northern Ballet through to nine council-run museums, galleries and heritage sites and many contemporary art spaces.
We are also close to everything the rest of Yorkshire has to offer, from The Hepworth Wakefield to the National Science and Media Museum, Yorkshire Sculpture Park and the Brontë Parsonage Museum. We have close links with many of these cultural institutions to support your practical learning.
Centre for Critical Studies in Museums, Galleries and Heritage
All students on the degree become members of the Centre for Critical Studies in Museums, Galleries and Heritage and enjoy opportunities from networking events and links to alumni to conferences, seminars and reading groups.
A set of core modules form the bedrock of the programme, introducing you to the concept of the ‘museum’ and the ways in which Western museums have represented and interpreted history and historical material.
You’ll also use contemporary theory to consider 20th-century museum practice and key questions around curatorship, museology and museum management. The role of the curator, funding and sponsorship and the display and interpretation of objects are among the topics you’ll cover.
Your core modules will give you the chance to apply your theoretical knowledge and gain practical skills. You’ll take part in an interpretation project in the University’s Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery, as well as completing a work placement in an external arts or heritage organisation.
All MA students in the School take two core modules which develop the research skills to complete research projects such as your essays and dissertation.
This will build to our unique MA Symposium in Semester 2, where you present some of your own research across interdisciplinary panels, and a dissertation which enables you to undertake research in a topic of interest to you.
If you choose to study part-time, you’ll study over a longer period and take fewer modules in each year.
Compulsory modules
Optional modules
You’ll be taught by leading researchers and experienced practitioners in their fields, and you’ll benefit from a range of teaching and learning methods. They include lectures and seminars, gallery and museum visits, as well as hands-on experience of specific collections in library sessions.
You’ll also learn from practical experience when you undertake your work placement, and a variety of external speakers will give you an insight into contemporary practice in the sector. Independent study is an important element of the degree, allowing you to develop your research and critical skills.
We use a range of assessment methods including essays, presentations, assignments and literature reviews among others, depending on the modules you choose.
Through a combination of theory and practice, the programme produces graduates who are able to develop professional careers in the museums and heritage sector whilst retaining a critical and reflexive eye on their own practice and that of the institutions in which they work.
It will equip you with a good understanding of the issues and approaches to art gallery and museum studies, as well as practical work experience – a combination which is very valuable to employers. You’ll also develop advanced skills in communication, research and analysis as well as cultural awareness.
Our graduates now work as heads of collection, curators and education staff in local authority museums, for national heritage organisations like the National Trust, charitable trusts and in arts marketing and public relations.
A significant number have also returned as research students and have secured scholarships to pursue their research topics, including Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) scholarships. Former research students are now forging academic careers in the UK, Canada and the US.
To get a flavour of the kinds of career trajectories our graduates have taken see the ‘news’ section of the Centre for Critical Studies in Museums, Galleries and Heritage and the alumni pages of the School website.
The curriculum of this programme is under review for the 2018/19 academic year. Programme structure and course availability is subject to change.
This programme encourages practices that are speculative and reflective, supporting work in a range of media. It is concerned with ways of learning that are experiential – embodied through and understood by the acquisition of a practice.
During the late 20th century, developments within visual art introduced new processes and situations, which resulted in an expanded concept of artistic practice.
Media-related disciplines supported by the programme include sculpture, painting and printmaking, photography, audio-visual and new media. The programme also encompasses approaches to practice that are non media-specific, including intermedia, time-based arts, performance, installation, public art and art writing.
You may complete the MA in one year, or continue on to the MFA. You will have access to a designated studio space and a wide range of studio equipment, technicians and resources, including printmaking, metal, wood, casting, painting, photography, reprographic and digital facilities.
Our students often work in groups across subject areas in the School of Art and collaborate throughout the year on critical, creative and curatorial projects. This gives you a unique opportunity to integrate the fields of art practice, art writing and curating, culminating in an exhibition of your own work or in a research project of your own design.
We regularly organise field trips and offer short residency and project opportunities with our local and international partners.
The programme also involves the theoretical study of this family of media and approaches, drawing on related fields and methods.
Students on this programme will benefit from studio-based learning in Edinburgh College of Art's (ECA) historic Lauriston Place campus, along with the exhibitions and events associated with a vibrant art college. The art college experience will be complemented by the University's extensive range of student support facilities, its libraries, student societies, and student accommodation.
Our purpose-built studios are adaptable, serving both as working studios and project and exhibition spaces. Our workshops and foundry provide excellent accommodation for working in wood, metal, mould-making, casting and carving and there are facilities for working with sound, digital imaging and video editing.
The programme develops from a broad to a specialist understanding of the technical resources and validating contexts in which artists work today, drawing inspiration and nourishment from the experience of our international student cohort.
This programme enables you to develop an ambitious art practice as well as providing you with the organisational and economic knowledge required to thrive as a self-employed artist. You will also be qualified to teach studio art in higher education and to work in the contemporary art sector.
MA Fashion Art Direction will provide the opportunity for practice-based postgraduate study in the creation of innovative visual communication and imagery for fashion end use. Outcomes could be related to print and pattern design, promotion, marketing, branding, visual merchandising, art direction, illustration, publishing or pursuing further postgraduate study.
You will be encouraged to engage with contemporary fashion audiences through the creation of work that explores original approaches to product, concept and/or communication. Your work should demonstrate a keen sense of contextual awareness, knowing where the work fits in the world and how the world might affect it. The programme will emphasise the importance of being digitally articulate and you will be able to combine this with traditional media and design processes should you choose to. Collaborative, interdisciplinary approaches will be encouraged, as will engagement with the creative industries beyond the School of Art.
Based in the heart of the School of Art, MA/MFA Design: Fashion Art Direction is part of an innovative design network — a community of staff and students exploring design ideas in a discursive, cross-disciplinary studio environment. Critically informed practical designers, the group works experimentally, inspired by new insights and possibilities.
While studying towards a particular qualification at MA/MFA level, students experience their subject in the broader context of contemporary design practice.
Dedicated spaces for the postgraduate community have been developed to enable the postgraduate community to flourish. These spaces, for thinking and practice, are located centrally within the School of Art, allowing easy access to an extensive range of workshops where the combination of traditional and state of the art equipment opens up a world of exciting possibilities.
The MA Design: Fashion Art Direction is made up of four units totalling 180 credits.
The programme is designed to help you acclimatise to the challenges of MA level research and practice, enabling you to identify and describe a clear direction for your postgraduate design study.
You will be encouraged to develop design propositions that encompass key design issues and have complexity and ambition, taking full consideration of the relative contextual drivers.
You will also be encouraged and supported to extend your experience in the professional sphere either through a practical project, research context, exchange, work experience, or other negotiated professional set of interactions with an external partner, groups of students and creative industry.
Towards the end of the programme you will undertake a major project to consolidate your past research and practice into fully realised collections, pieces, proposals, business plans, or exhibitions – whatever means is appropriate to the work. You will also have developed a strategy for the continuation of your practice located and contextualised to the profession or discipline.
If you choose to progress to MFA Design: Fashion Art Direction award you will study a further two units of 60 credits each.
This route is focused on the continuation of your practice aligned to the research and selection of appropriate public or professional venues and platforms to disseminate a significant body of work. You will be required to produce work for a public audience in the most relevant and appropriate form along with any implicit publicity and dissemination material.
You are special, and we know you have thought hard about this decision. We have created a course we are proud to offer graduates like yourself who feel they need more time to develop their specialist portfolio, or to direct ‘that’ film. But most of all, we know that when you graduated from your BA you felt like it was the beginning… not the end.
When designing our animation courses we spent a lot of time in the development stages discussing our ideas with industry creatives, graduates and students. As a result, the Animation team has developed a unique and ground-breaking philosophy that affects everything we do: ‘CREATIVE EMPLOYABLE THINKERS’: The idea is simple, everything you do on this course will be aimed at you becoming a Creative Employable Thinker. Every module you study, every grade you receive, all the feedback you get will be based around the central aim of you becoming a Creative Employable Thinker.
This MA in Animation will help you advance the skills you already have and develop the skills you aspire to gain.
There are many careers within the Animation industries, so we have designed a curriculum that allows you to mould your experience to suit your needs. We will encourage you to explore and develop in the creative areas you are most passionate about, allowing you to specialise in single production area such as (but not limited to): storyboarding, directing, concept art, character design, script writing etc.
We believe that no two creative people are the same, so we encourage you to follow your instincts and identify your personal creative potential.
Modules and Assessment
You will take part in both formative and summative assessments. Formative assessments provide feedback on work in progress; this is done during in weekly sessions, as well as in writing throughout the course.
You will use blogging to document your research, progress, learning, reflections and thinking. The blogs are a useful tool within the formative and summative assessment processes and will help you develop your professional voice.
Summative assessment is given as the final grade which a rigorous procedure often involving two or more members of staff, students work is examined in accordance to the Module Learning Outcomes and Assessment Criteria which is stipulated on the Assessment Brief (given at the beginning of each Semester).
The resources and equipment in Animation fully support the aspiration for high end productions to be created. You are encouraged to work to industry standard and aspire to award winning animations.
Facilities include:
Typical career opportunities open to graduates include:
Motion graphics artist, character animator, character designers, concept artists, art directors, feature/shorts/commercial directors, 2D digital animator, 2D drawn animator, 3D digital animator, stop motion animator, animation supervisor, animation producer, production manager, production assistant, CG modeller, compositor, digital painter, rigger (2D or 3D), editor, model maker, set builder, layout artist (digital or analogue), lighter, match move artist, rotoscope artist, VFX artist, SFX artist, storyboard artist, scriptwriter.
Staff at Wolverhampton are always happy to advise on and discuss your career ambitions.
A central element of the course is the application and testing of communicative drawing, as well as drawing with identified purpose and intent. An intense and productive process of enquiry and investigation, focusing on the acquisition of fluency, clarity and coherence in expressing visual narrative, will form your core practice.
The techniques and technologies which form the practice-based mechanisms of illustration are also key, with the aim of achieving a dynamic, sophisticated and confident application of process. You will actively explore printmaking, digital painting, creative software and all forms of natural media. Drawing will also form a methodology for research and investigation, supported by lectures and workshops, and delivered by illustration staff who have a wide range of industry and publishing experience. You will be guided in intellectual and critical enquiry through practice, lectures and reflective study.
The programme encourages enterprise and promotion alongside personal development. You will have opportunities to print, publish and disseminate your work in collaborative and personal publications for our imprint, ‘The Pittville Press,’ which is actively promoted at book fairs and publishing events. A series of intensive tutorials will direct you towards a creative portfolio strategy relevant to your personal aims.
Modules
Assessment is 100% by coursework
The development of each student's creative practice in intensively supervised by professional artists
You will have opportunities to print, publish and disseminate your work in collaborative and personal publications for our imprint, ‘The Pittville Press,’ which is actively promoted at book fairs and publishing events in the UK and internationally. You can also publish work through our Cheltenham Illustration Awards.
The programme offers a breadth and richness of experience, enabling you to reach your full potential and meet the challenges of advanced research and scholarship.
On this course you will experience a broad range of skills and techniques relating to a range of different areas within the animation and digital effects industries before choosing a specific area to specialise in. You then develop your skills and knowledge in that chosen area to become a multi-talented animation and digital effects artist.
You are supported in the production of creatively driven work to a professional standard and encouraged to challenge boundaries and think in original ways. You develop intellectual and critical approaches to creative tasks and production processes in animation and digital effects. The course provides an environment where you are enabled to work flexibly and independently within the diverse media industries.
We have up-to-date industry standard animation and digital compositing software and facilities allowing you to build your professional skill set throughout the course. You develop practical and conceptual skills in animation production through real world scenarios. You make and complete animations and digital effects to a high professional standard and develop a portfolio of work that showcases your skills to future employers.
Postgraduate certificate modules
Postgraduate diploma CORE modules
Postgraduate diploma OPTION modules
Masters modules
Careers exist in filmmaking professions, where everything from set designing to cinematography now involves or is entirely completed by computer-generated images, animation and digital compositing – all techniques you can develop on this course.
Continuing expansion of this area offers exciting and challenging career opportunities in • film and television production • game development • motion graphics • web content creation.
Artists, designers and performers doing strange things with technology. That is what the MADtech study programme is about. You will be expected to employ and artistically explore hybrid technologies to imagine, interpret and change human interaction with a transforming world. You will apply a trial-and-error and tinker mentality, with play and experimentation forming key aspects in your development and receiving special emphasis in the research you do. This mentality, combined with a critical reflective attitude and conceptual skills, will lead to unexpected perspectives and result in artistic multimedia, performative or design work.
MADtech students come from various professional backgrounds and fields of media, art and design, and all share a fascination with technology. The combination of disciplines gives you an opportunity to develop your artistic vision while deploying a hybrid artistic practice as an autonomous artist, designer or performer. As your work engages with the world, you will grow both as an individual and in your artistic practice, reinforcing the power of your imagination and exploring your own connection to a transforming, technologically charged society.
Hybrid practice
The MADtech make-and-learn community and professional practice is a hybrid approach and a mixture of art forms, including autonomous, applied and performing arts. Your project and the purpose of your work will define what sets you apart from other professionals working in this domain, while you all share an artistic process and are connected by creative and technological workspaces and experimental collaboration. In this situation, the artistic process gives direction to multiple patterns of research. These patterns of research strengthen the artistic process and enlarge your future field of work. Within the MAdtech programme you can combine or specialise in one or more research areas in the fields of media, art and design, which are linked together by the concept of a technologically charged society, for example Artistic Technology Research, Happiness Design Research and Experimental Performance Research.
Past, present and future
No matter which research track your on, at MADtech we are continually seeking a dialogue between different viewpoints on the past, present and future: between art and science, between theoretical and applied research, stable and unstable media, old and new technologies, and local and global forms of society. This is a group process in which we share our views and ideas, work together and learn from each other. At the same time, you will also embark on your own path, improving your knowledge and skills, and learning to reflect critically on your own position, role and work and on the world around you.
