Master of Arts in Game Development (Design)

at Kingston University London - Kingston School of Art, Knights Park United Kingdom

Kingston School of Art offers a stimulating environment for the postgraduate study of Illustration. Kingston University has some of the best fabrication and visual process workshops in the UK. This enables the most exciting innovations in ‘thinking through making'.

The Communication Design: Illustration MA course, offered through the highly-regarded Department of Illustration Animation, aims to develop creative professional understanding of Illustration in the context of communication design.

The course is structured to challenge you and your preconceptions about both illustration and design. It places an emphasis on the patterns of research you develop and the visual methods you employ to explore and unravel briefs. You will be expected to demonstrate how you research and develop your ideas. In this context, research is not only a working process it can also be considered an outcome in its own right.

This program asks you to examine: what, how, why and who as key factors in design thinking. This represents a shift from the traditional definition of design and illustration as a problem solving activity to a placing the focus on problem finding. The course encourages the exploration and understanding of the methods and processes at work in contemporary illustration.

This course has been designed to enhance your long-term employment possibilities through an appreciation of the changing global, technological and social context of illustration and design. It includes the option of a one-year UK work placement, enhancing your experience and connections in industry. This type of assessed placement is not available on any other postgraduate courses.

This course will help you to develop the skills and knowledge required to operate as a project manager in the creative industry.

If you are a creative practice graduate who understands making and production processes and, you would like to perfect skills required to lead and design projects, then this is the course for you. Or perhaps you're a mid-career creative practitioner, who wants to develop your commercial and operational skills and understanding but, need to contextualise your learning within the collaborative manner of creative projects? If so, then this course is also for you.

Creative careers are varied, full of change and frequently project-based, so developing project management skills, at postgraduate level, is a huge advantage.

On this course you will also study for a professional Agile PM Practitioner certificate. This certification is accredited by the Agile Project Management Group and is internationally recognised. The inclusion of such a widely recognised certification process in the programme is to further enhance your career and employability prospects.

On this course you'll explore the medium of film, developing your own filmmaking practice while acquiring skills for working professionally.

You will engage with innovative, ambitious ideas, developing successful films in groups and individually, and gain a practical knowledge of filmmaking production. Your learning will be supported by technical inductions, workshops with industry professionals, guest lectures and field trips.

You'll produce films with high production value, through our moving image workshop and with specialist filming equipment. You will be able to experiment with digital and analogue formats, and shoot, process, telecine and edit on 8mm and 16mm gauges. You will also have access to our 3D workshops, photography darkrooms, printmaking and animation facilities.

You'll be taught by academics who are active practitioners in the film industry, working as directors, artists, editors and producers; they offer access to unique work experience opportunities. For example, a number of our students have participated in placements at Institute of Contemporary Arts, Film & Video Umbrella and Fly Film.

The Illustration Animation BA(Hons) - the UK's first degree in Illustration Animation - at Kingston School of Art combines narrative and time-based subjects to give the undergraduate complete creative freedom to engage in visual thinking, expression and communication.

The course is part of the highly-regarded Department of Illustration Animation and Kingston University is ranked No. 1 in the UK for design and crafts* in the Guardian League Tables 2021 (*covers graphic design, interior design, illustration, animation and product and furniture design.)

Illustration has expanded from the traditional printed page to explore many forms of visual media including digital objects and interaction, spaces and environments. Animation as a time-based medium allows exploration from traditional to hybrid domains like film and television, and virtual and augmented reality.

We celebrate the cross-pollination of ideas and skills through the hybrid nature of the course. You'll benefit from dedicated studio spaces and the opportunity for collaboration between illustration and animation.

Built around drawing, the course is carefully structured to develop your individual voice, applying content to image communication to reach an audience.

We encourage learning through making and you will have access to all workshops to test and prototype using any process from etching to ceramics, arc welding to laser cutting, and 3D printing or large-scale textile printing.

The course includes self-initiated and group work assignments and presentations encouraged through self-reflective and critical discourse, individual practice is built and tested by peer group interaction. This breadth ensures students develop the range of skills essential to contemporary practice in all forms of applied image making.

Projects with industry, cultural and social institutions test and shape student understanding in real-world situations. Staff practitioners and alumni networks offer insight and contacts with international creative practice, including studio visits and placements.

The course has an excellent reputation for nurturing graduates who go on to be leading practitioners in illustration and animation, as well as design, direction and a broad range of creative careers.

The Computer Animation postgraduate degree equips you with the creative skills and technical knowledge needed for jobs in the CGI, games, and VFX industries.

With an emphasis on industry-relevant workflows, our project-based curriculum is designed to teach you specialist skillsets in the 3D production pipeline. Underpinned by core concepts and visual narrative, these specialisms include:

• 3D character animation
• Organic and hard-surface modelling
• Digital sculpting
• Shading and texturing
• Lighting and rendering
• Compositing
• Character rigging

Throughout the course you will build a showreel for your professional portfolio. It is one of a suite of digital media courses that immerses students in a studio environment to work as part of an interdisciplinary team from across the full programme.

Equally importantly, our assessments and tutor feedback will help you develop the following employability skills:

• Analysis, observation, and self-critique
• Communication of concepts and techniques
• Project-planning and time-management
• Research and problem-solving
• Interpretation and implementation of feedback
• Teamwork and collaboration.

The Computer Animation postgraduate degree equips you with the creative skills and technical knowledge needed for jobs in the CGI, games, and VFX industries.

With an emphasis on industry-relevant workflows, our project-based curriculum is designed to teach you specialist skillsets in the 3D production pipeline. Underpinned by core concepts and visual narrative, these specialisms include:

• 3D character animation
• Organic and hard-surface modelling
• Digital sculpting
• Shading and texturing
• Lighting and rendering
• Compositing
• Character rigging

Throughout the course you will build a showreel for your professional portfolio. It is one of a suite of digital media courses that immerses students in a studio environment to work as part of an interdisciplinary team from across the full programme.

Equally importantly, our assessments and tutor feedback will help you develop the following employability skills:

• Analysis, observation, and self-critique
• Communication of concepts and techniques
• Project-planning and time-management
• Research and problem-solving
• Interpretation and implementation of feedback
• Teamwork and collaboration.

This course allows you to experiment and explore your creative potential, preparing you for a career in the visual arts or creative industries. Students work with a range of traditional and new technologies, developing their ideas through sculpture, painting, printmaking, installation, film / photography, performance and sound.

Kingston is ranked No.9 in the UK for art (Guardian University Guide league tables 2020).

Key to the course is the professional skills modules, which will help you acquire strategic skills for planning, showing, recording and communicating your work.

You'll get to hear from visiting artists and take part in live external projects. Our industry links include the Tate, Stanley Picker Gallery, the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), Drawing Room and Auto Italia.

You'll be taught by practising artists, writers and curators in purpose built workshops and you'll have the option to go on field trips and study abroad. By the time you graduate you'll have gained real-life experience and skills and completed a portfolio that will help kick-start your career.

This course recognises the diversity of design practice and prepares you for employment within the design industry.

You'll be given time to develop a personal design approach, learn new skills and apply them to carefully-structured projects with industry partners, that prepare you for your preferred career direction. The course requires you to challenge yourself, your perceptions of design and your role as a designer.

Live client projects are an integrated feature of the course providing valuable industry experience; recently the course has worked with brands including MADE.com and Tefal. We additionally encourage independent external collaboration. You'll work in an enviable learning environment that includes newly-renovated studio spaces and workshops supported by attentive academic and technical staff.

Faculty-wide technical resources available to students include the 3D workshop with ceramics, big build, woodworking, metalworking, blacksmithing and bronze-casting; CNC, Laser, Zund, 3D print, state-of-the-art filming environment and animation suite; industry standard photographic suite with two new digital darkrooms; newly-specified digital media workshops with hardware and software upgraded to a professional level.

We have been ranked in the top 25 Fashion Schools in the World, and one of only three in the UK, by Fashionista, the influential and trusted source of fashion news. View the 2019 rankings.

Our Fashion BA (Hons) degree is ranked no. 1 in London for Fashion in The Guardian University Guide league table 2020 and was one of  a handful of worldwide institutions to have been awarded four badges of excellence by the Business of Fashion (for Best Overall, Best in Global Influence, Best in Learning Experience and Best in Long-term Value).

The course focuses on evolution and radical change in design. You will explore how design is influenced by cultural, social, critical and historical studies.

You will develop your own signature style, experimenting across sketch work, 2D to 3D, knitwear and digital print in Kingston School of Art's workshops and dedicated fashion design studios. You will also have access to our working dress archive which includes pieces from 1750 to the present day, including the recently acquired Sibling knitwear archive. Our curator also works closely with Bath Fashion Museum.

Our strong industry links mean you will learn to apply creativity to the real-world and will be industry-ready on graduation.

This collaborative degree, between Kingston School of Art and the Design Museum, has grown into one of the world's foremost programmes for design curators.

Taught by leading curators and designers, the course engages critically and creatively with our fast-changing, complex world. You will have the opportunity to curate live projects and build your own professional profile, through the Design Museum and with institutions such as the Architectural Association, British Council, Gallery Fumi and the Royal Academy of Arts. Led by both research and practice, this course has taught aspiring curators for more than fifteen years.

The Kingston School of Art environment, which includes the Stanley Picker Gallery, Dorich House Museum and outstanding workshop facilities, encourages creativity and experimentation as responses to interrogations of contemporary conditions. To actively consider geopolitical, social and economic concerns, Curating Contemporary Design is taught within a transdisciplinary framework that allows students to develop responses to the complexity of the world today.