Program Overview

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MA Animation

The MA Animation course provides a space for students to explore the rich and diverse practices of animation and develop their individual practice through exploration, experimentation, and collaboration. You will have the freedom to advance your own style, technique, and narrative voice.

Course Overview

This course offers you the opportunity to choose your own route through the field of animation, studying either MA Animation or the bracketed specialism, Visual Effects. Animation is a discipline that adapts, challenges, and leads the moving image industry. It is in the DNA that we all share since it can be applied equally to live action, games, XR, live performance, online, and any number of time-based media as well as being an important form in itself.

Features and Benefits

• You will join a course that fosters interesting and diverse engagement with external partners within Manchester, the region, nationally, and internationally.
• You will become an integral part of SODA - home to a creative community of research-active staff with expertise in diverse fields of practice such as Animation, Filmmaking, Photography, Games Art, and Sound Design.
• You will have the space, guidance, and technical resources to enable you to develop your independent practice, whilst taking advantage of the transdisciplinary activities provided by our offer of option modules.
• You will have the opportunity to extend and develop your experience in the professional sphere by being introduced to our close links with national and international educational partners, research communities, and strong links with the creative and digital sectors across the UK.

Accreditations, Awards, and Endorsements

• Toon Boom Centre of Excellence
• Blackmagic Design Education Partner

Year 1

Core Modules

• Co-Lab 6 (Animation): This module provides the space where the four SODA research themes are investigated, explored, and applied.
• Interdisciplinary Practice 1 (Animation): This module allows you to hone and focus your craft in the wider subject of Animation by exploring existing, new, and experimental techniques informed by the wider academic and evolving industrial landscape.
• Independent Project: Through this independent project module, you will have the opportunity to apply the contextual knowledge and interdisciplinary skills that you developed in the previous modules to produce a body of self-directed work.

Option Modules

• CG Industry Pipeline: This module builds awareness and understanding of workflow processes in visual effects post-production and more broadly across computer-generated productions.
• Critical Study: In this module, you will enhance your skills in academic postgraduate study.
• Digital Art Activism: In this module, you will learn how digital art can be used to investigate and communicate social, political, and environmental issues.
• Exploration in CG: This module provides an opportunity for students to explore innovations and future technologies within the CG (Computer Graphics) / VFX (Visual Effects) disciplines.
• Interdisciplinary Practice 2 (Animation): This module builds on Interdisciplinary Practice 1.
• Perspectives: This module is intended to offer you an introduction to a world of playful and idiosyncratic ideas and provocations from contemporary thinkers.
• Professional Practice: This module focuses on developing knowledge, understanding, and awareness of professional practice in your discipline and the wider associated industries.
• Reimagining Technologies: Humans make and rely on technologies, profoundly transforming the ways in we live, interact, and inhabit the world, and these can immensely vary between peoples and places, eras, and ideologies.
• Skills in XR Storytelling: In this module, you will be introduced to storytelling techniques and narrative design concepts and skills for working across physical spaces and immersive digital media to engage audiences.
• Spaces in XR Storytelling: In this module, you will produce a finessed, critically informed Extended Reality immersive proposal and pitch deck aimed at an industry sector of your choice.
• Sustainability and Digital Arts: As a postgraduate student in SODA, this module gives you the chance to consider the role of digital arts as a catalyst for sustainable futures.
• VFX Group Production: Working in an environment designed to closely simulate the experience of industry, you will collaboratively work within a large-scale project.

Study and Assessment

Study

• Full-time: 20% lectures, seminars, or similar; 0% placement; 80% independent study
• Part-time: 20% lectures, seminars, or similar; 0% placement; 80% independent study

Assessment

• Full-time: 100% coursework; 0% practical; 0% examination
• Part-time: 100% coursework; 0% practical; 0% examination

Entry Requirements

A minimum of 2:2 Honours undergraduate degree is required, in one of the following subjects: Animation; 3D Animation/Character Animation; Motion Graphics; Illustration; Games Art; Concept Art; Graphic Design; Animation and Visual Effects; Post-production and VFX; Interactive Media; Moving Image; Computer Graphics and Simulation.

Fees and Funding

UK and Channel Island Students

• Full-time fee: £12,000 per year
• Part-time fee: £2000 per 30 credits

EU and Non-EU International Students

• Full-time fee: £22,000 per year
• Part-time fee: £3667 per 30 credits

Careers Support and Prospects

93.7% of our UK-domiciled, full-time, postgraduate taught graduates are employed or in further study 15 months after graduation.

Additional Costs

Specialist Costs

• Compulsory estimate: £50
• Optional estimate: £1000

It is anticipated that students joining this programme will have their own personal computers with adequate capability for digital animation and/or visual effects use. Those students wishing to purchase their own laptop should expect to pay between £1,000 to £1,500. All students will have easy access to animation equipment and subject-specific high-end computing equipment and Cintiqs situated in the school that includes software relevant to their field of animation. In addition to desktop machines, students are also able to access the university laptop loan service. Students working off campus may wish to purchase their own photography equipment, computer, and licenced software.

All students are strongly advised to purchase a portable hard drive to continually back-up their work (£50-100). In cases where students need to print their work, additional costs may be incurred which will be determined by the size of print and choice of papers (£5 - £35).

Other Costs

There are opportunities throughout the programme to attend local, national, and international study trips and festivals which will incur costs. These costs are proportional to the distance and length of the activity. Students are encouraged to market their work in forums relevant to their study which may mean paying for materials or a digital service provider.

Study trips in the UK are likely to cost between £100-200 for travel, food, and accommodation. The anticipated cost of a European study trip is in the area of £400-500 inclusive of travel, accommodation, and subsistence (plus any relevant visa costs). All overnight / residential trips will not be compulsory and an alternative will be offered.