Art Based Research

Test your creative limits by exploring a specialism of your choice. You’ll develop an appreciation for the processes, tools and constraints of an alternate discipline and better understand others' workflows and deadlines, while broadening your skill set.  

Once you have identified a new area of game art or animation practice which you wish to research and develop, you will embark on a phase of self-directed research to identify the technical pipeline resources and workflow examples required, to inform your development.  

World Building: Pre-Production

You and your team are tasked with designing and planning the construction of a whole game world for production.  

From designing the levels, assets and mechanics, to writing narrative, game design documents and experimenting with code and blueprints, your team will use industry-standard collaborative strategies and methodologies such as Agile, to collaboratively build a world for the Alpha stage of development.  

Researching a diverse range of cultural sources and contexts, both fictional and historic, you will work in a multi-skilled team to start work on a game or interactive project. 

Developing Concept Art Vocabularies

Produce professional concept art by perfecting your skills and application of your expertise within a collaborative production.  

Working on your 2D skills and exploring new and experimental media, tasks will include designing new concept art on top of an interactive game prototype.  

You may tie work undertaken in this module into either of the level’s other modules. 

Developing Character Art Vocabularies

In this module you will perfect your character designs and builds by developing your proficiency in sculpting, modelling and texturing.  

Through the application of advanced figurative art principles and extended life drawing, you will sharpen your observation skills, and your understanding of human anatomy as you continue to translate that to your 3D work.  

Developing Environment Art Vocabularies

This module is your opportunity to consolidate your 3D modelling and texturing abilities to produce amazing visual designs for immersive environments, and the assets that populate these worlds.  

With guidance from your tutor, you will identify an area that you want to focus on to build your experience and professional practice. This may be extended tool sets, or specialist processes such as procedural modelling.  

You are encouraged to experiment and test out different techniques and approaches. 

World Building: Production

Build the game world you planned in the previous study block. By the end of the module, you and your team will have built an engaging interactive experience. Delivering content in line with production milestones, you will prepare to release your game and reach your intended audience.  

‍‍Collaboration

You will work on a cross-discipline project that utilises skills and techniques such as animation, VFX or virtual production techniques.  

The module will focus on a range of collaboration skills allowing you to develop and utilise them as part of a collaborative team both outside and inside your disciplinary studies.  

You will initially focus on a “challenge brief” that will test your abilities beyond your specialism. The second “challenge brief” is set by course teams and is closer to your original discipline. 

Professional Portfolio

Ready yourself for the job market by building a professional portfolio that showcases your talents by displaying the body of work you have produced up to this point.  

In this module you will learn the form and protocols used by visual artists to exhibit their work and gain employment. Professional mentors guide you to consolidate knowledge and understanding of the enterprise and employment context of Game Art.  

You will receive industry feedback on how to apply for work in games, bespoke career advice, and will engage with your professional mentor and explore the enterprise possibilities that arise over the course. 

Future Skills

Future Skills will develop your commercial awareness and entrepreneurial mindset to be able to identify suitable opportunities and understand how they can be leveraged to your advantage.  

Through detailed analysis of the business side of the industry and practical learning, you will design a project proposal within a team. The focus will be on working in an increasingly professional and autonomous manner, delivering content in line with agreed production milestones, and in a way which would enable you to commercially release your work should you choose to do so.  

This will culminate towards an investment-style pitch where you present your project to an industry panel.  

Technical Art Practice

Take your technical skills to the limit by investigating the use of cutting-edge specialist hardware and software used in games.  

Delve into 3D and real-time technologies so the complex and nuanced learning required to become a skilled operator and technician becomes second nature.  

You will deepen your understanding of the role of a technical artist, by examining the various roles they can fulfil, and what their place is in a typical game production pipeline. Investigating the different aspects of technical art including pipeline, tools, 2D, 3D, Procedural Modelling and VFX, you will gain an intuition of an array of new technical arts. 

Major Collaboration

The final big team project, where you are free to collaborate in a transdisciplinary fashion to produce an innovative product or service, based on your own intellectual property.  

Develop your professional autonomy, as you may choose to work on your previous project, or a newly proposed project that satisfies a real need or a response to a market opportunity your group has identified.  

Projects could include enterprise solutions,  mobile apps, installations, games, web applications, robots, immersive experiences, software development tools, and more.