This ambitious and interdisciplinary course offers practice and study in image-making applied principally within illustration but also in a range of creative design and communication contexts from animation to commercial installation. Our premise is that within contemporary visual practice the boundaries between art, design and illustration have merged, this in part is due to digital technologies but also the cultural merging of disciplines within the visual and performing arts.
New creatives can find themselves working on initiatives that require a range of skills, are multi-contextual, multi-media and increasingly involve collaboration with others. Within this context the course offers an in-depth, reflective and process led approach to image-making and image media.
Drawing is an enduring and central course activity in giving form to imaginative and conceptual thought, and as a means to understand in depth aesthetical, conceptual and expressive strategies in image-making and pictorial design. The course is delivered using a project framework designed to replicate the type and range of briefs anticipated in an industrial setting. Projects also provide a context and creative challenge, they make demands that stretch your understanding and encourage a ‘what if’ approach to visual problem-solving. Projects are both set and self-defined and can be developed in a range of media process - animation, moving image, digital imaging, printmaking, photography, painting, mixed media, three-dimensional design.
We encourage involvement in the creative industries. You will have the opportunity to participate in major student competitions, external exhibitions, industry initiatives as well as internships and study abroad exchange. In the final year of study a rigorous professional practice programme helps you prepare for employment and our alumni work in a wide variety of occupations that include illustration, animation, film, television, art direction and project management, advertising, publishing and authorial practice, concept art and computer games. Some students continue study at post-graduate level in a wide range of subjects, film, national heritage, art with medicine, art and psychotherapy, art and science, teacher training and fine art.