Program Overview

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Foundation Year

This Foundation Year has been specifically designed to allow you to undertake an additional year of study to build stronger creative footings that ensure successful progression through your chosen degree.

Working in a friendly, lively and energetic environment, you will be given the freedom to expand your knowledge of practical skills, creative exploration and conceptual thinking, underpinned by broad critical understanding, academic writing and emerging theoretical principles.

Dedicated Foundation tutors will support you throughout the year and BA teaching staff from across all the schools within the Birmingham Institute of Creative Arts (BICA) will work closely with you to prepare you for progression.

There will be a range of opportunities to work on collaborative and individual projects, aimed to build your social skills and identify your role as a developing practitioner.

Throughout the year you will be challenged with projects that question your current creative experiences and explore a breadth of experimentation to broaden your technical and critical understanding.

You will be encouraged to analyse methods and materials appropriate for creative development and to question your position in relation to historical, contemporary and future world scenarios. Both practical and written research tasks will be supported by one to one tutorials and small discussion groups to help you constructively build academic and social confidence.

The two first semester modules will form the building blocks for future work and will explore core principles of creative practice focussing on the development of technical confidence, study skills and productivity.

The two final semester modules will encourage a positive integration between research and practice, challenging decision making and technical competency. This semester is designed to empower you with independent learning skills appropriate for your future BA studies.

On successful completion of the Foundation Year, you will have the flexibility to change direction and switch courses onto a related undergraduate degree programme within Birmingham School of Art, School of Visual Communication or the School of Games, Film and Animation.

This course is

open

to

International

students.

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What's covered in this course?

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BA (Hons) Video Game Digital Art

The course covers both core and technical art skills. It starts with helping you develop your core art skills, so expect to be doing a lot of drawing and studying topics including colour theory, composition, value and tone. Once we’ve covered the fundamentals we’ll move onto supporting you develop your technical and digital art skills. You will focus on 2D and 3D graphics covering texturing, user interface design, environment art, character art, animation and art pipelines for interactive products.

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Your first position in the video game industry

Building upon your core and technical art skills, in the first year after your foundation year you will be tasked with a specific role within our in-house game development studio over the summer term. This work experience gives you the opportunity to apply the knowledge and professional practices you’ve learnt on the course in a safe and supportive environment. Typically for these projects you’ll be using industry-standard game development tools such as

Unity

and

Unreal

. These summer projects have in the past been mentored and supported by external partners such as Red Bee Media, FreeStyleGames and Codemasters. The work you’ll produce during these summer placements can act as excellent portfolio pieces, demonstrating your ability as both a professional artist and effective team member.

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Putting you in control of your final project

Throughout your degree, you will be provided with a structured programme of learning, in line with your chosen specialism of video game art. The course culminates with a project you define yourself which targets a specific subsector of the games industry, such as character art, environment art or user experience (among others). You have the choice of either proposing your own individual project or collaborating with other students to create another video game project for your portfolio.

Teaching takes place in a modern campus based in Birmingham City Centre where you’ll be provided with studio space to complete projects and all the software you’ll need for the duration of the course.

You will be taught by staff with significant experience in the video game development industry, having worked with game developers including, Free Radical Design, Codemasters, Freestyle Games, Sega and EA Games.

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Real experience

So, by the time you graduate, you'll have tangible, games development studio experience under your belt, ready to launch your dream career as a games developer.

I have been fully supported throughout my journey to become a professional artist. I found the practical, studio simulations to be particularly useful as they both helped me in my art practice and gave me tangible production and development experience.

Mark Sutcliffe, 2014-16

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Why Choose Us?

Your Foundation Year gives you the chance to explore Video Game Digital Art, Graphic Design, Illustration, Photography, Fine Art and Art and Design. You will have the flexibility to switch (should you wish to change direction) onto a number of related undergraduate degree programmes within School of Games, Film and Animation, Birmingham School of Art or the School of Visual Communication.

Teaching is delivered by our team of industry practitioners, who collectively have over 100 years of video game industry experience, having worked on franchises such as EA’s ‘Battlefield’, Codemaster’s ‘Formula 1’ and Sega’s ‘Sonic’. They have also taught, trained and mentored students, graduates and practitioners, who are now successful industry developers, working at studios and publishers which include Ubisoft, Microsoft and Rockstar North.

During the course you’ll work on numerous projects with periodic input from industry partners. Previous partners and mentors have included Codemasters, Pixel Toys, Sony Interactive Entertainment Europe, Microsoft’s Rare Studio and Rockstar North.

Top 5 for Animation and Game Design (Guardian League Tables 2023).

On the course you’ll learn a range of new skills and art disciplines relevant and appropriate for careers in the field of video game development, such as concept, environment, character, GUI and animation.

This course will develop you to be able to move into employment, or further study, for example on our Industry-recognised Master’s Courses, Gamer Camp, which is a finishing school for game developers (coders, artists, designers and producers) based at Birmingham City University.

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Studying with us during the Covid-19 pandemic

The University has put in place

measures in response to Covid-19

to allow us to safely deliver our courses. Should the impact of the pandemic continue in future years, any additional or alternative arrangements put in place by the University will be in accordance with the latest government public health advice, health and safety legislation, and the terms and conditions of the

student contract

.