BA (Hons) Illustration with Animation

Through this unit you will be allocated one of four pathways that addresses programme-based clusters of cognate practice areas.  As well as lectures, seminars and talks from guest speakers you will also have the opportunity to engage in visits that consider the cultural contexts and professional issues in your set discipline. 

This unit introduces you to the key disciplines which underpin the programme and aims to develop your visual language and technical experience. It includes three practical studio projects which examine the relationship between Drawing, Animation and Reprographics and explores information gathering strategies appropriate to the programme.

This unit introduces you to a range of visual problems and strategies to deal with them. The unit then allows you to further develop your visual language in an extended project in either still or moving image.  Through a series of short projects you will engage with issues such as non-verbal communication, visual wit, working sequentially and narrative. 

This unit provides a foundation in critical, historical and professional issues that will enhance your development within practice-based clusters.  You will engage with a set of selected thematic options in critical and historical areas.  The course also raises cluster-side professional issues and those related to employability; these will facilitate the development of both your studio based work and your identity as a practitioner. 

This unit provides an exploration into experimental and more complex sequential narrative and storytelling through either a still or moving image option.  Once you have acquired this foundation you will negotiate a learning agreement with your tutor that will build on your prior learning and help you to develop your own personal practice.  Through a range of narratives and storytelling approaches you will encounter the language and requirements of professional visual communication problems and develop strategies and methods to deal with them within your own work.

Your studies on this unit will focus on experimental approaches to visual language and cultural forms in order to extend your expressive potential as an illustrator or animator.  You will select two consecutive briefs to work on that will encourage an experimental approach to your illustration and animation practice.  After this selection has been made you will embark on a personal interpretation of the selected brief and your understanding of appropriate creative possibilities will be developed through an engagement with a variety of  materials, methods, media, cultural/contextual research and by regular tutorial and peer group discussions. 

Through the use of a negotiated learning agreement with your personal tutor, and working in tutorial groups, you will focus on the development of a body of work that will form a personal portfolio and/or DVD of moving images.  At the beginning of the course you will author your own working brief and refine the individual creative direction of your practice.  Once you have composed your learning agreement, and reflected upon your original intentions, you will resolve the technical and conceptual issues related to your finished piece of work. 

This unit will provide you with the opportunity to research and critically analyse the cultural and professional issues related to your individual practice interests.  You will produce a negotiated project focussed around an individually defined area appropriate to your aims and ambitions.  The project will be weighted towards a chosen route which could encompass critical, historical or professional/employability issues. 

Through the use of negotiated learning agreements you will produce a body of work which continues to extend your individual creative practice.  For the duration of your project you will be supported by a personal tutor and a tutorial group where you will be encouraged to develop an independent visual language that expresses your ideas coherently.  From the generation of ideas to the finished body of work, you will develop a critical understanding of the processes and methodologies involved in illustration/animation authorship. 

Your studies on this unit will enable you to attain the following learning outcomes:

• The ability to demonstrate a depth of analysis and a breadth of knowledge in the research, development and the production of a sustained body of work
• Clarify your proposed approach to illustration and/or animation practice within the broad remit of the subject discipline
• Identify visual communication problems appropriate to the development, refinement and exploitation of individual skills and abilities
• Produce work which explores individual innovation and creativity through the synthesis of intention, process, context and outcome

In this final year unit you will create your own fashion brief on which you will base your final project.  Once this foundation has been laid you will showcase a significant body of work to academic, public and professional audiences (as related to your personal interest, ambition and career aspirations).  You will also have the opportunity to include a collaborative and interdisciplinary practice into the project as related to your own ambition and professional context.

Your work on this unit will enable you to:

• Demonstrate professional, artistic and/or academic knowledge relevant to your individual practice
• Reflect on and critique the context for your chosen practice with insight and authority
• Produce a body of work to a professional level within your chosen context
• Demonstrate an enterprising and/or collaborative approach to your personal professional practice
• Demonstrate a resourceful and creative approach in the showcasing of ideas and finished artworks to an external audience