Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Photography

at Arts University Bournemouth United Kingdom

Animation’s position as an interdisciplinary field that draws from Art and Design, Film, Computing, Fine Art, Graphics (and other areas besides) necessarily means that top-level graduates in the field will have mastered a cross-disciplinary understanding of a range of skills, techniques, theories and discourses.

The overriding objective is to enable all MA Animation Production students to see themselves as part of a ‘community of practice’ (that includes research and critique, and the building of a ‘production culture’), existing not as atomised students ‘doing their own thing’, but as part of a meaningful whole.

You’ll be a BA graduate in Animation or a related discipline. Although we will consider good graduates from other disciplines – having accepted them from Costume, Graphics, Digital Media, Illustration, Modelmaking, Photography and Fine Art in the past – you must have some understanding of the animation production process to prosper on this course.

Our alumni have gone on to work at Aardman, ILM, Lupus Films, Framestore, Pixar, Moving Picture Company and many other companies. We’re proud of the network of AUB graduates who are now employed in animation – many of whom return to talk to current students.

Through the adaptive reuse, rebranding, remodelling, recycling and recommunication of existing spaces, structures and environments, this course will offer you the skills, knowledge and work experience that you need to become a leader in one of the most dynamic, creative, economically valuable and diverse areas of design.

Interior Architecture and Design has an enviable record in graduate employment, often working with clients on real design projects in a studio-based, professionally-focused learning environment.

We offer you the chance to gain extended work experience in your second year; a uniquely valuable opportunity among UK degree courses and one which increases your graduate employment potential. This course will teach you to understand the three-dimensional potential, the atmosphere, and the identity of the spaces in which we live, work, rest, and play.

BA (Hons) Costume offers a comprehensive approach to the study, interpretation and creation of costume. Students will become skilled at producing accurate historical recreations of costumes as well as expressing imaginative flair through creative and conceptual costume making. In addition, you will learn the art of tailoring and couture dressmaking.

Costume supervision is integral to the course and can be described as interpreting a two-dimensional costume design into a three-dimensional costume through sourcing and procuring garments. This exciting role places you at the heart of live productions, as you are key to ensuring the smooth running of the wardrobe department for all types of live performance.

The current BA (Hons) Costume and Performance Design course has been awarded the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for its ‘distinguished degree-level education in costume design for the UK’s leading creative industries’.

On this course, you’ll gain practical skills and explore the thinking behind fashion branding and communication. You’ll create image and film, and develop visual identities using the latest creative software. We’ll also teach you the theory behind everything from creating a narrative for an image to building a global brand identity.

Great fashion communication comes about through collaboration. In AUB’s creative community, you’ll have the chance to do just that. You’ll be introduced to, and work with, students on other BA (Hons) courses, including Fashion, Commercial Photography, Textiles, Film Production and Make-up for Media and Performance, so the opportunities are limitless to apply your skills and collaborate.

According to the British Fashion Council, the UK Fashion Industry supports 797,000 jobs. With a degree from AUB, you will also make your own unique mark in this exciting space.

We’ve recently been awarded Gold by the TEF (Teaching Excellence Framework).

Our teaching staff are exceptional. They're inspiring teachers, industry practitioners, technicians and researchers who are here to support you with your studies and help you to achieve outstanding outcomes.

Our course is designed to provide you with a high-quality education in contemporary art practice, and is delivered by highly respected tutors, acclaimed artists and excellent technicians.

Over the duration of the course you will develop your individual artistic voice, informed through your own research and critical evaluation, peer and tutor’s feedback and a deep understanding of your chosen materials. When you graduate, you will be fully equipped to contribute and add something new to the UK’s art scene as an emerging artist.

Exhibiting and being enterprising is a key part of our course. We offer many opportunities for you to exhibit your work with an emphasis on site-specific locations thanks to our unique partnerships with local museums, councils and research centers. We also have a series of international student artist residency placements and worldwide partner university study exchanges. All these experiences are specially created by our tutors to give you a real sense of what it means to be a professional artist - both in the studio and the broader world.

In the first year you will work in open plan studios and participate in collective workshops to find what inspires and excites you as an artist. In the following years you will develop your practical, theoretical and critical skills within your self-defined study plans. The course culminates in two exhibitions of your work for your final major project, one on campus at Bournemouth and the second in London.

We support and encourage experimentation and development of skills, and workshops are offered as a continual part of the course over the 3 years. These are conducted in painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, video, digital media and sonic art as well as seminars to foster your conceptual development and understanding of curation / how exhibitions are put together.

You will have additional access to the latest technology, such as laser cutters, CNC (computer numerically controlled) machines and 3D printers. Our aim is to provide you with a solid foundation so that you can create contemporary artworks with high technical skill combined with solid conceptual grounding.

Above all we offer a welcoming and inclusive course, set in a vibrant campus dedicated to creative practices of all kinds.

Visual Communication combines skills in illustration, graphic design, typography and digital design to create images that persuade or inform.

From the start, the course focuses on hand-drawn imagery to develop a feel for the shapes and styles that connect with audiences. Practical experiences will be used to develop your skills. We’ll help you to build your visual awareness and understanding of the world around you. In addition to plenty of theory and debate, you’ll have the chance to work on live briefs with other students and find work placements in creative businesses.

Visual Communication underlines the importance of good ideas. You’ll leave with all the practical skills that you need to work in a vibrant and exciting industry. Our graduates work as freelancers in small design companies and with larger firms, both locally and internationally.

Our graduates go on to play an active role in the creative industries, from branding consultancies to digital design, publishers to packaging. Many of our graduates have established their own companies. Experimentation and discovery are important values on this course. There is no ‘right answer’ and you will be supported to find your own path as you learn more skills. In addition to developing creative design strategies, we encourage you to bring your own experiences and interests to your work. We value conceptual approaches that attract attention, and then evoke an idea or emotion that is relevant and on target.

As a graphic designer, you’ll have to make decisions in complex and unpredictable situations. You’ll have to react quickly to new information, evolving briefs and advances in technology. On this course, you’ll learn to innovate under pressure and handle issues such as user- centred design, sustainability, emerging technology, service design, information design and interactive design. You’ll engage with leading design companies who set briefs, give talks, and help us to develop the curriculum. You’ll discover your own approach to visual problem solving and graduate with the technical, critical, and conceptual skills that are highly prized by the industry.

Our teaching staff are exceptional. We’ve recently been awarded Gold by the TEF (Teaching Excellence Framework) which assess quality of teaching.

They’re inspiring teachers, researchers, industry practitioners and technicians who are all here to support you with your studies and help you to achieve outstanding outcomes.

Since the Harry Potter boom in the early 2000s, alongside a recent influx of new releases from studies, such as Disney and Marvel, the film and VFX industry has expanded at an exponential rate.

This has firmly established the UK as the leading country for high-quality Visual Effects work and created an unprecedented demand for fresh, highly-trained graduate talent from the UK education system. The course was created in response to an industry demand for visual effects artists who possess strong observational skills and the ability to apply them collaboratively in the workplace.

Designed from the ground up by industry professionals, specifically to address this demand, the primary ethos is to create the quality required for employability within the industry. Developing a foundation in traditional artistic techniques, such as drawing, colour theory, perspective, photography and composition, 125 you will learn what it takes to create your own feature film quality visual effects.

Our 2D workflow uses Nuke for all compositing, and Maya/Zbrush and Arnold for 3D, while our colour pipeline is based on an industry model with custom LUTs to ensure accurate monitoring of colour in our fully calibrated VFX labs. All of our VFX labs are equipped with top of the range industry-level workstations and are supported by our render farm, fibre network, and clustered storage. With smaller class sizes, students have full access to the VFX labs and workstations on specified lab days alongside a more personal, teaching approach. You will experience a team-based production process that replicates industry best practice; including previsualisation, concept development, on-set data acquisition, asset building, and compositing. We’ll introduce you to the underlying concepts and fundamental principles of Visual Effects work and teach you the necessary creative and technological disciplines, developing your knowledge of 2D and 3D software.

The course prides itself on the currency of its staff. You will be taught by industry professionals that between them have worked at studios, including ILM, Framestore, Double Negative, Electronic Arts, MPC, Image Engine, Weta Digital and many more. We have taken the knowledge gained at these studios and have brought it into the classroom. Having worked in the industry at the highest levels, we not only know what makes a strong artist, but also what the visual effects industry is looking for. We are focused on our graduates’ successful entry into the VFX industry, as well as them having a long and successful career.

The visual effects industry community is very close, much like a family where everyone knows each other. Through the personal connections of our industry experienced staff we are able to bring in top class guest speakers, such as Christian Manz, Creative Director, Film at Framestore and Sue Lyster, Director of Studio Operations, and ILM, to name a few recent guests.

Students apply to the course predominantly from graphic design courses but are welcomed from a variety of backgrounds (if they can show an aptitude for typography). Students may have studied photography, architecture, illustration, interaction design, three-dimensional design, fine art, or, subjects such as journalism, philosophy, psychology, anthropology or sociology.

Whatever your background, you’ll be required to reflect on your worldview; the underlying assumptions and understanding that guides and constrains your practice, and to use this reflection as a starting point from which to further develop. Your practice can take many forms: it can be self-expressive, or socially orientated; print, screen-based or three-dimensional.

It can focus on an aspect of a well-defined area of design, such as branding, experimental typography, publishing, and user-centred design, or on something more unconventional defined as part of your study.

Graphic designers often work in groups, sometimes comprising members from different disciplines. MA Graphic Design provides many opportunities to work in interdisciplinary ways as it sits alongside the courses of other disciplines. Many of the taught sessions such as the introduction to research methods and processes occur in these interdisciplinary groups. At other times however you’ll be developing your project with your supervisor and other students on your course. This will require you to develop a theoretical framework, methodology and research methods that support your research focus.

As a graphic designer you should anticipate the possible consequences of your design interventions, including the meanings constructed through your practice, in relation to ethical and sustainability issues as well as to other relevant contexts. Creative approaches are required that respond to complex situations in which many problems reside. Outcomes are not constrained by media or by limited interpretations of what it is to be a graphic designer.

Consequently, an outcome might involve the design of an experience or service, as much as it might concern more conventional forms of graphic production.

MA Fine Art represents an exciting opportunity for students to challenge and build on their previous achievements and to study at an advanced level. Students deepen their knowledge and their ability to focus on their chosen field in relation to the key aspects that inform it.

Set within a community and culture of makers, students engage in dialogue and debate with their peers, both within and across MA pathways.

This experience provides dynamic and interactive sessions, which are vital to the enhancement and testing of new thinking and ideas generation as well as offering the broadest available critical arena for discussion of student work.