Bachelor of Arts - Animation (Honours)

BA (Hons) Animation covers the discipline from drawing fundamentals to finished production: the principles of movement, character design and storyboarding, 2D and 3D animation techniques, rigging, lighting and rendering, and post-production compositing, taught across three years toward a final film or specialist showreel.

The course teaches animation as performance before software — timing, weight and acting studied through observation and life drawing — because studios can teach a package in weeks but cannot teach movement sense; industry-standard 3D and compositing tools then sit on top of that foundation through project work rather than isolated tutorials.

Software expectations deserve a plain answer for applicants: the course teaches industry-standard 3D, 2D and compositing packages, and student licences for most of them are free or heavily discounted, so the home-practice barrier is lower than families assume. What does cost money is time — animation rewards daily drawing and daily iteration more than almost any creative discipline — and students who treat the studio as a nine-to-five from the first term produce reels that look professional by graduation. The £17,300 fee sits at the technology-faculty standard across the three recorded September cycles.

Production discipline is built in through team briefs that mirror studio pipelines, with pre-production, asset creation, animation and post stages properly separated, and the final year devoted to a personal film or a specialist reel targeted at the student’s chosen niche — the artefact recruiters actually assess.

Entry pay runs £21,000–£26,000 with motion graphics and advertising absorbing far more graduates than feature animation, and the UK’s VFX and animation sector remains internationally significant. The completed honours degree qualifies for the Graduate Route — 18 months of open work permission under the rules current applicants will graduate into — with dependants excluded on taught study.