Game Arts & Animation

UCAS code: W61M

Here's what Arts University Plymouth says about its Game Arts & Animation course.

Our BA (Hons) Game Arts & Animation 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.

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.

Why Choose This Course? 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 modules in both 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.

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.

You will focus on concept art and visual development towards outputs such as: characters, world-building, 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.

Access Cutting-Edge Facilities and Industry Partnerships 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 access to your own high-spec 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. 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.

You will benefit from our new industry partnership with Real Ideas, gaining access to Europe’s first-of-its-kind immersive dome; 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.

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.

In your first year, you’ll explore all aspects of animation through a range of short projects, covering key production skills such as narrative development, storyboarding and character performance. You will learn technical production skills in 2D, CGI and stop-motion methods of practice, giving you an opportunity to see which way you would like your own work to develop. Your second year is more focused, with an emphasis on production team working, as you share skills with others while you develop your own specialism. You will be supported in progressing your animation career path through professional development modules. In your final year, you’ll put your own stamp on a dynamic and professional showreel, which will demonstrate your production skills to the industry and associated sectors that use animation as a creative medium. You will have focused lectures on marketing and distributing your work either to the independent film sector or to the commercial end of the animation and games industries.