Why you should study this course
From the outset, this course gives you the opportunity to create a highly creative portfolio relevant to your chosen area of creative practice. Other benefits include the following:
- The outward facing nature of the course. Professional practice is a key component of the course with scope to undertake placements and briefs that respond to the needs of the creative industries.
- A flexible approach enabling you to individually develop your creative practice and portfolio towards a wide range of potential career paths.
- Opportunity to develop skills and experiment with a wide range of technology and traditional media.
- Opportunity to take a placement or study abroad year (subject to additional costs).
- Teaching staff are industry experienced practitioners and/or research active. Staff have worked for a wide range of clients and on major arts funded projects. Staff bring this experience into the teaching environment through practical teaching activities and project work that is core to the curriculum - it also helps to maintain currency and professional alignment to course content. Staff maintain a continuous relationship with industry and have a significant and growing portfolio of collaborative and industry-focused projects that inspire student research and development activities.
What you'll study
This exciting course aims to keep you up to date with the latest industry developments and encourages you to enhance your abilities to respond to creative briefs. We adopt a diverse learning approach, familiarising you with a wide range of software packages, digital and physical production, character design and animatics.
Our current links with local, regional, national media industries, including companies like The Walt Disney Company, ITV and Aardman Animations, provide numerous opportunities for location work, site visits and talks by visiting media professionals, together with live projects and a professional experience scheme. In short, you’ll be taught to tell interesting stories and distribute those stories to the largest possible audience.
Year one
The first year focuses on developing new skills and applying these to project briefs. You are taught essential software packages, character design and narrative structure as well as developing your drawing skills and ideas generation for both illustration and animation outcomes. Alongside this, you study professional practice and have contextual modules.
Modules
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Introduction to Animation - 20 credits
This module will introduce the knowledge and practical skills required to develop a strong understanding of animation. You will learn on an individual and group basis through a series of practical workshops, including traditional and experimental observational drawing, creative thinking, and essential computer software. These workshops will be supported by lectures, seminars, one-to-one tutorials, group critique and a studio culture.
Compulsory
Assessment: coursework
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Sequential Narrative - 30 credits
This module aims to develop your abilities to understand the application of narrative to a range of media. You will be provided with a project brief and a range of concept visualisation workshops to run throughout the duration of the module. Specific core skills including storytelling, writing for screen and the image-to-text relationship will also be addressed within this module.
Compulsory
Assessment: coursework
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Pre-Production 1 - 30 credits
In this module, you will explore the development stages that should be employed to produce a tiered and achievable animation production. Throughout this module, you will be taken through the stages of pre-production through a series of workshops including scriptwriting, character development, character design, storyboarding and animatics, culminating in a single combined output.
Compulsory
Assessment: coursework
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Animation Production - 30 credits
In this module, you will create an animation based upon pre-production work. With an emphasis on the application of animation theory, you will demonstrate narrative through the animation of characters and the use of appropriate 2D or 3D software.
Compulsory
Assessment: coursework
Year two
Year two builds upon the skills developed in the first year, with greater emphasis on professional expectation, technical processes and the expanded application of character design and narrative. You will also be expected to begin to identify your chosen area of creative professional practice.
Modules
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Animation Practice - 20 credits
The module encourages experimentation and problem solving whilst taking a broader approach to animation production, learning new techniques to address new challenges. You will develop your understanding of two-dimensional and three-dimensional digital animation theory and practice whilst developing a personal visual language.
Compulsory
Assessment: coursework
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Pre-Production 2 - 30 credits
In this module, you will explore both digital and physical production methods, and have the opportunity to explore form through the use software or physical/mechanical production. You will develop a body of work that demonstrates a personal visual language that responds to market trends, innovation and emerging markets and avenues of employment, whilst simultaneously identifying the area of professional practice that you wish to pursue.
Compulsory
Assessment: coursework
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Modelling and Rigging - 30 credits
In this module, you will look at the industry conventions that underpin effective modelling and rigging for animation, games and live action content. Exploring both digital and physical production methods, you will have the opportunity to explore form through the use software or physical/mechanical production.
Compulsory
Assessment: coursework
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Collaborative Practice - 30 credits
In this module you will work as part of a creative team to produce a completed animation-related project, offering you the opportunity to experience first-hand the requirement for effective interpersonal engagement and professionalism across number of disciplines. You will gain understanding of the team dynamics and how to utilise own and collaborators’ skills and abilities to the advantage of the overall team leading to a successful project.
Compulsory
Assessment: presentation
After your second year, you have an opportunity to take a sandwich year, studying abroad or on professional placement*. If you do so, you'll take a non-credit bearing module which will help to ensure that you learn from and reflect upon your experiences.
You will be given advice but may be responsible for finding your own placements (with guidance). Similarly, study-abroad years with your first choice of international institution cannot be guaranteed. You will pay no fees to Coventry University for your placement or study-abroad year though you are responsible for covering your own costs.
Final year
In the final year, you will undertake will develop the pre-production elements in preparation for the creation of a final major project or develop a range of work that can be made into a showreel. You can build a creative and professionally credible portfolio in order to pursue your chosen specialism.
Modules
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Pre-Production 3 - 30 credits
You will undertake projects that are relevant to their professional goals and will address issues including visual development, scheduling, turnaround times, verbal and visual presentation, budgeting and meeting the expectations of clients and contractees. Emphasis will be on ideas generation, encouraging students to formulate solutions, professionally, articulately and within strict deadlines.
Compulsory
Assessment: presentation
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Professional Development – 10 credits
This module places particular emphasis on recognising the relationship between professional practice, ethical conduct, critical reflection and personal planning, and developing skills to enhance career progression. You will work towards identifying your particular career ambitions and developing effective strategies for navigating the pressures, requirements and responsibilities that may shape your working life.
Compulsory
Assessment: coursework
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Final Major Project – 60 credits
This module allows the opportunity to consolidate and refine your practice, produce a substantial, sustained and coherent body of work leading towards a relevant professional portfolio. This module also provides you with the opportunity to both conceive and manage complex and challenging projects, by responding to a variety of live externally set briefs, and/or by extending your own studio practice.
Compulsory
Assessment: coursework
