Bournemouth University is my first choice University in England. Known to be the worlds 4th best Animation university, the courses offered are absolutely incredible. The Talbot campus (Arts University Bournemouth) offers 2 animation degrees. 1 in Computer Animation Art and Design and the 1 in Computer Animation Technical Design. The university is located in the beautiful seaside town Poole in the south of England. This campus specialises in art, performance, design and media and was established in 1880.
BA (Hons) Computer Animation Art and Design
The course is taught within the National Centre for Computer Animation (NCCA), which id one of the most highly established and regarded centres for animation in England. This course focuses on the creative side of computer animation, combining traditional art like life drawing and cinematography with more technically focused aspects to produce computer animation using industry-standard tools and software. The course is 3 years long with an optional 8 week placement (4years with a 30-week placement) and is Full Time. The course is £9,250 per year, without living costs etc.
This course is my first choice course.
This course is my first choice course.
The Portfolio Entry Taken from the course listing on the university website
I will asked to submit a portfolio of creative work to support of my application. Portfolios could include:
I will asked to submit a portfolio of creative work to support of my application. Portfolios could include:
- Observational studies in any medium - Still life, environments (interior, exterior, architectural studies, perspective studies), lighting studies, colour studies, anatomy studies
- Sketchbook and works demonstrating self-motivated study and research. We need to see work that the applicant has done outside of their studies and courses, and can discuss with keen interest and enthusiasm
- Life drawing
- An appropriate application of detail. Adding detail to artwork should not be at the expense of strong form and structure
- Work that demonstrates creativity and proficiency in composition, form, structure, colour and design, in both 2D or 3D. For example - character design, environment design, illustration, graphic design, product design, media design, photography, sculpture
- A show reel of moving image work (but this is not essential)
The course in detail: Taken from the course listing on the university website
Year 1
- Introduction to Production Tools: Employing the principles and practices of software tools, you will complete an effective, realistic, visual effects and computer animation project.
- Design for Production 1: You will gain skills in effective design and planning in pre-production for both games and film; and hone your 2D and 3D design skills. You will present your original concepts and designs for a specific audience.
- Fundamentals of Design: the basic building blocks which form the foundations of design for animation and games. You will study fundamental design principles and practice drawing, perspective, colour theory, composition, form and shape language relating to character and environment design, drawing from historical and contemporary examples of good practice.
- Character Animation Production: You will build on the knowledge you gained of 3D animation and visual effects tools in the Introduction to Production Tools unit.
- Moving Image Theory & Practice: Lectures will include film screenings as a basis for discussions of the theory & perspectives in moving image studies and practices in filmmaking.
- Narrative Strategies: This unit provides you with the foundation skills for writing, direction, performance and cinematography that you will use in all animation or film productions that you develop and present throughout the course.
- Advanced Moving Image Theory & Practice: This unit will advance your knowledge of theories and practice in moving image studies and film making.
- Design for Production 2: Building on your design skills to an advanced level to complete a pre-production pack with supporting materials.
- Lighting & Rendering: This unit will further your knowledge of lighting and rendering for visual effects.
- Group Project: You will work as part of a team in the conception, planning, management and presentation of a piece of work that demonstrates your technical and creative skills.
- Character Rigging: Providing you with the fundamental skills for rigging characters for animation. You will produce a short artefact in the form of a reusable rigging tool or rig.
- Visual Effects Acquisition: Gain a range of practical skills, including camera operation, lighting, tracking and set survey, and become familiar with the procedures and protocols for safely setting up and executing live action studio or location shoots.
- Personal Inquiry: You will be able to focus on developing a specialist area of practice, or a complementary skill or technique that will benefit your career aspirations.
- Real Time Graphics Systems: Using state-of-the-art game engines, you will be introduced to the fundamental principles of real-time graphics engines.
- Scripting for DCC: The purpose of this unit is to ensure you are equipped with the programming and scripting skills necessary to use modern Digital Content Creation (DCC) tools such as Maya, Houdini and Nuke. Using a “test driven design” (TDD) approach, you will learn core software engineering and programming skill to help understand and utilise the architecture of modern DCC tools in the development of pipeline tools and techniques.
- Modelling & Texturing: You will learn more advanced creation techniques for hard surface and deformation modelling, UV unwrapping for multiple tile workflow and texturing. You will further develop abilities to work to specific asset requirements and limitations, specifically with regards to the creation of photo-real assets for use in the visual effects live action integration pipeline.
- Technical Effects: Looking at visual effects technical effects creation and integration pipeline, you will be introduced to areas of technical effects such as rigid body dynamics, particle systems, fluid dynamic systems, fire and smoke simulation, and character effects systems like fur and cloth.
- Final major project & dissertation: This unit is the culmination of your studies. Working as either an individual or in a group, you must produce a significant body of work (typically a short animation, game or software artefact). This must be accompanied by a dissertation demonstrating your ability to communicate evidence of problem solving.
- Master Class: You will undertake an industry set and supervised brief, in which you demonstrate your chosen area of specialism.
- Research & Development Project: Choose an academic, practice based or production oriented project to produce a research paper or industry-standard professional report.
- Digital Fabrication: Providing you with hands-on experience of 3D printing technology and its applications in art and design.
- CG & Animation for Cultural Heritage: This unit will investigate the different forms of cultural heritage and the ways in which computer graphics and animation techniques and methods can be applied in their interpretation and preservation. We will cover their application to interactive visualisation such as virtual museum exhibits and also HCI and 3D printing.
- Non-fiction Animation: Explore, consider or challenge non-fiction animation, documentaries and live-action film at on-campus screenings.
- Digital Matte Painting: Develop different techniques for creating photo-realistic digital environments and apply them to 2D, 2.5D and 3D digital matte painting.
BA (Hons) Computer Animation Technical Arts
The course is also taught within the National Centre for Computer Animation (NCCA) and combines the study of art, animation techniques and computing for modern computer animation, film, VFX and games production. The course is organised by ScreenSkills, which is a company that is among the top creative training and education providers the UK has to offer. The course is 3 years long with an optional 8 week placement (or 4 years with a-30 week placement) full-time. The course is £9,250 per year without living costs etc.
The requirements are as follows: 112 - 128 UCAS points including a minimum of 2 A levels or equivalent including 32 points in one required subject. A portfolio will also be required in support of your application.
The Portfolio Entry Taken from the course listing on the university website
I will be asked to submit a portfolio of original art work to support my application. This should include sketchbooks, paintings, drawings, photographs, compositions or abstract 3D visuals and designs. The course also is open to portfolios containing computer generated graphics/visuals or abstract compositions, designs and images/image sequences generated using computer code (like Blueprints, JavaScript, Python or Scratch). I will need to demonstrate your creative abilities and visual competence.
Portfolios should include:
The requirements are as follows: 112 - 128 UCAS points including a minimum of 2 A levels or equivalent including 32 points in one required subject. A portfolio will also be required in support of your application.
The Portfolio Entry Taken from the course listing on the university website
I will be asked to submit a portfolio of original art work to support my application. This should include sketchbooks, paintings, drawings, photographs, compositions or abstract 3D visuals and designs. The course also is open to portfolios containing computer generated graphics/visuals or abstract compositions, designs and images/image sequences generated using computer code (like Blueprints, JavaScript, Python or Scratch). I will need to demonstrate your creative abilities and visual competence.
Portfolios should include:
- Visual studies in any form- still life, environments, lighting studies, colour studies, anatomy studies, abstract compositions or abstract 3D visuals and design
- Sketchbook and works demonstrating self-motivated study and research. This should be work completed outside of your studies and courses that you can discuss with keen interest and enthusiasm
- Life drawing
- Compositions and designs, images. Image sequences generated using computer code
- Work that demonstrates creativity and proficiency in composition, form, structure, colour and design, both 2D or 3D. For example, character design, environment design, illustration, graphic designs, product design, media design, photography, sculpture.
- A show reel of moving image work (this is not essential)
The course in detail: Taken from the course listing on the university website
Year 1
- Introduction to Production Tools: Employing the principles and practices of software tools, you will complete an effective, realistic, visual effects and computer animation project.
- Programming Principles: this unit provides an introduction to computing and programming concepts that are the foundation of software development. They are introduced in a manner that demonstrates their relevance and application to computer graphics, animation, games and visual effects production.
- Visual Narrative & Design: the fundamental building blocks that enable you to conceive, present and generate pre-production material. The unit also covers the principles and techniques of storytelling through scriptwriting and storyboarding.
- Technical Arts Production: An introduction to the roles of technical animators and technical artists. The unit combines life drawing studies, computer animation production and scripting.
- Mathematics for Computer Graphics: Key mathematical methods in the context of computer graphics, animation and games.
- Moving Image Theory & Practice: film screenings as a basis for discussions of the theory & perspectives in moving image studies and practices in filmmaking.
- Visual Studies: You will start with the fundamental building blocks to understand, conceive, present and generate original visual images , image sequences or concepts inspired from observation in nature. You will also address the wider context of 3D animation content generation with in the production pipeline process of animated features and computer games.
- Advanced Mathematics for Computer Graphics: The more advanced, specialist mathematical and algorithmic techniques for computer graphics and animation.
- Computing for Graphics & Animation: Introducing you to Object Oriented Programming (OOP) and the functional concepts that are commonly used in computer graphics and animation.
- Group Project: You will work as part of a team in the conception, planning, management and presentation of a piece of work that demonstrates your technical and creative skills.
- Character Rigging: Providing you with the fundamental skills for rigging characters for animation. You will produce a short artefact in the form of a reusable rigging tool or rig.
- Visual Effects Acquisition: Gain a range of practical skills, including camera operation, lighting, tracking and set survey, and become familiar with the procedures and protocols for safely setting up and executing live action studio or location shoots.
- Personal Inquiry: You will be able to focus on developing a specialist area of practice, or a complementary skill or technique that will benefit your career aspirations.
- Real Time Graphics Systems: Using state-of-the-art game engines, you will be introduced to the fundamental principles of real-time graphics engines.
- Technical Effects: Looking at visual effects technical effects creation and integration pipeline, you will be introduced to areas of technical effects such as rigid body dynamics, particle systems, fluid dynamic systems, fire and smoke simulation, and character effects systems like fur and cloth.
- Lighting & Rendering: This unit will further your knowledge of lighting and rendering for visual effects.
- Advanced Animation Techniques: An in depth exploration of the advanced technologies in character animation such as rigging, muscle modelling and deformation, skinning, facial expression tracking and animation, motion capture and synthesis, gesture, hair and cloth simulation, crowd animation and other state-of-the-art topics.
- Principles of Rendering: This unit introduces modern image synthesis techniques from fundamental principles of the interaction of light with reflective geometry. You will apply principles of light, colour and reflectance in the design of shaders for both off-line and real-time applications.
- Advanced Moving Image Theory & Practice: This unit will advance your knowledge of theories and practice in moving image studies and film making.
- Scripting for DCC: The purpose of this unit is to ensure you are equipped with the programming and scripting skills necessary to use modern Digital Content Creation (DCC) tools such as Maya, Houdini and Nuke. Using a “test driven design” (TDD) approach, you will learn core software engineering and programming skill to help understand and utilise the architecture of modern DCC tools in the development of pipeline tools and techniques.
- Modelling & Texturing: You will learn more advanced creation techniques for hard surface and deformation modelling, UV unwrapping for multiple tile workflow and texturing. You will further develop abilities to work to specific asset requirements and limitations, specifically with regards to the creation of photo-real assets for use in the visual effects live action integration pipeline.
- Final major project & dissertation: This unit is the culmination of your studies. Working as either an individual or in a group, you must produce a significant body of work (typically a short animation, game or software artefact). This must be accompanied by a dissertation demonstrating your ability to communicate evidence of problem solving.
- Master Class: You will undertake an industry set and supervised brief, in which you demonstrate your chosen area of specialism.
- Research & Development Project: Choose an academic, practice based or production oriented project to produce a research paper or industry-standard professional report.
- Digital Fabrication: Providing you with hands-on experience of 3D printing technology and its applications in art and design.
- CG & Animation for Cultural Heritage: This unit will investigate the different forms of cultural heritage and the ways in which computer graphics and animation techniques and methods can be applied in their interpretation and preservation. We will cover their application to interactive visualisation such as virtual museum exhibits and also HCI and 3D printing.
- Non-fiction Animation: Explore, consider or challenge non-fiction animation, documentaries and live-action film at on-campus screenings.
- Digital Matte Painting: Develop different techniques for creating photo-realistic digital environments and apply them to 2D, 2.5D and 3D digital matte painting.
- Computer Vision & Image Processing: This unit introduces you to the fundamental concepts of computer vision and image processing.