Master of Arts (Hons) in Creature Design

at Leeds Arts University United Kingdom

This exciting and creative course nurtures individuality through collaboration. It is designed to produce ‘Ideas That Work’ from creative professionals in advertising.

We’ve developed exceptional links with leading national and international agencies such as McCann, Ogilvy, BJL, Havas Linx, Atomic London, Intermarketing, Golley Slater, Jaywing, CreativeRace, Home, Uniform and TBWA, which will maximise your exposure to industry practice.

Creativity sits at the core of our proposition and we encourage originality and innovative thinking. Our ‘Actively Creative’ philosophy helps you to experience first hand creative challenges which are developed both in-house and through our industry contacts.

Our tutors have considerable industry experience spanning art direction, copywriting and branding. They will support you to understand and analyse advertising, so that you can use what you discover to inform and develop your own work.

You’ll have the opportunity to enter prestigious international competitions which have included D&AD New Blood Awards, YCN, The Drum Chip Shop Awards, and AdVenture in past years. Top agencies have offered coaching, mentoring, work critiques, live briefs, workshops, competition briefs and work experience possibilities. Our students regularly win work experience opportunities with agencies.

This course will advance, widen and deepen your existing fine art practice through a series of modules designed to enable your progress through practice-led research. Dialogic exchange is at the heart of this course of study, staging, at its core, teaching and learning approaches in the form of regular dynamic group work, supported by individual tuition.

This course cradles all specialisms within contemporary practice such as painting, drawing, sculpture, text, performance, media and sound. The core seminars will use group work to explore the wider field of practice within which such disciplines are situated, and deepen individually nuanced discourses through an individual tutorial programme.

Working with subject specialists you will be introduced to practice-led research approaches to advance your knowledge acquisition of advanced critical and analytical methods and approaches in your own practice. The programme of study will explore your creative ambitions in the context of both knowledge and market-led fields.

The course begins with a sharing of personal intentions through exhibiting your own work to peers, and progresses to a conclusive moment of public sharing, where you will materialise theories, concepts, techniques, processes and crafts as artwork. You will be supported to articulate your ideas in visual, oral, written and material forms.

Our MA Graphic Design explores the fascinating relationship between design-led practice, industry engagement and critical analysis.

You will build a body of self directed work informed by contemporary graphic design practice and emerging debates within the field of design. Driven by problem analysis, critical debate and design innovation you will develop briefs, engage with an audience and work collaboratively. Your investigation will explore the relationship between visual and contextual research, investigating the social, political and ethical contexts of your work.

You will be supported by a team with diverse research and practical interests within graphic design and visual culture, working closely with visiting industry professionals. You will source briefs, work with clients and apply your contextual and industry informed knowledge and understanding to question why graphic design needs to exist and who is the audience - the focus is on becoming a problem seeker not just a problem solver.

This is a practical course - you will have opportunities to write, plan and make films amongst a community of filmmakers.

You work in production teams to produce a range of films, providing the professional experience and abilities to prepare you for work in the film and screen industries. There is a strong focus on production; supported by watching, investigating, analysing, critiquing and thinking about film in order to discover your own identity as a filmmaker. Working in small groups with other passionate filmmakers, you will take an active role in all stages of development and production, learning the skills of directing, producing, cinematography, sound, editing, production design and storytelling.

Our students enjoy creative freedom and have the opportunity to pitch and initiate filmmaking projects across a wide range of productions, from fiction to documentary, advertising to music video. You will develop skills such as self-promotion, knowledge in finance and distribution, and learn to commercialise practical experiences and skills to successfully navigate the film industry.

Learning and teaching is supported through filmmaking practice: in the studio, on location, in seminars and film screenings, production meetings and class discussions, industry talks and study trips including film festivals. Course related educational visits/trips experiences can take a variety of formats including physical and virtual.

This course provides the framework and critical discourse for the candidate to develop, create, and publish a graphic novel over the course of study.

You will research and develop sequential narrative methods, world-building techniques, and graphic novel publishing and immersive technologies. Engaging with the breadth and depth of what a sequential narrative could be, you will critically examine and contextualise your work in relation to emerging social, political, cultural, and ethical issues. You will work individually and collaboratively to produce a graphic novel that questions the role of the comic artist, audience, distribution and immersive media.

You will be supported by a team with diverse research and practical interests within sequential narrative, comic art and graphic novel culture, working closely with visiting industry professionals. You will challenge what a graphic novel can be, working collaboratively with writers, artists, publishers and readers – the aim is to create externally-engaged, progressive, inclusive, and immersive graphic novels for a diverse and growing readership.

The course offers unique opportunities to develop a portfolio of creative and critical writing in a lively and stimulating environment.

Writing is a valuable social currency and opens up doors. The creative possibilities of the written word are enhanced and invigorated by working collaboratively alongside established visual and performing arts courses.

You’ll write in the real world and be encouraged to enter competitions, write for review, write to briefs, and write alongside visual and performative creatives. You will be guided through a range of creative writing landscapes including writing for performance, prose writing, short fiction, art criticism, poetry, script writing, novel writing, new media and zines. You will be encouraged to think locally and globally about the place, purpose and reach of writing, exploring online platforms as well as the potential of the festival, gallery and event space.

You will learn to successfully employ a range of critical thinking skills that will enable you to make sound and valid judgements about the value and role of fiction and non-fiction, becoming a critical reader, thinker and producer of language. You’ll consider the role of writing as a social, cultural, historical and political meaning maker, and explore its contemporary relevance. A positive approach to a writing life is emphasised. You are encouraged to develop cultural awareness and a reflective, self-aware and critically analytical mind-set that will equip you to take on the writing world with a portfolio of transferable skills.

Our BA (Hons) Animation is a focussed course aimed at students interested in becoming a professional animator who can work across animated film, TV and related industries. You will work alongside other students who are collectively interested in animation production.

On this course students will learn practical and technical skills across a range of traditional and digital animation practice. A grounding in animation and related concepts and theories will help you make an informed choice when you begin to specialise on a specific area of animation practice. This is developed through practical investigation of the animation production cycle including narrative development, worldbuilding, character design, storyboarding, background/layout and animating using a variety of media and techniques.

We encourage collaboration both at course level and across the University, including live briefs and international competitions, helping you to focus on developing your specialist practice within animation.

Work experience and studio visits are supported as part of the professional practice elements of the course. Visiting professionals will give an insight into career development and industry practices.

Previous visiting professionals have included animators, modelmakers, sound designers, scriptwriters, producers and directors from companies such as CBBC, Aardman Animation, Mackinnon and Saunders, Cartoon Network and Golden Wolf. The course encourages students to attend festivals and conferences as opportunities arise. Through these you’ll learn to generate your own networking, collaboration and career opportunities, and how to find work and clients when you graduate.

Our BA (Hons) Fine Art course immerses you in a diverse, creative community where you are encouraged to learn the business of becoming an artist in the contemporary world.

This engaging course is housed within specialist studio communities, each led by experienced teams of artists. You will engage with a range of strategies to support the development of your studio practice with an emphasis on craft, skill and critical thought.

You will be supported to produce work that spans a diverse range of media. You will embrace appropriate forms of resolution such as painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, installation, performance, screenings, text or sound works.

On joining the course you will embark on an initial period of orientation, induction and familiarisation which draws from our long history of traditional art education. You will then work in one of the specialist communities where there will be regular critiques, seminars and material workshops involving students from different levels of the course.

We engage with cultural visits to galleries and exhibitions, and you can take inspiration from nearby Leeds Art Gallery, the Henry Moore Institute as well as the award-winning Yorkshire Sculpture Park and The Hepworth Wakefield. Course related educational visits/trips experiences can take a variety of formats including physical and virtual.

You will be encouraged to seek opportunities to exhibit your work, gaining valuable experience and practical skills that will help to prepare you for a range of rewarding careers in this exciting discipline.

The MA Photography course promotes innovation and experimentation. Through an examination of contemporary photographic practices you will learn to contextualise cultural and ethical uses of photography within a range of different photographic genres.

The course will examine strategies to resolve projects into different outputs such as publications, exhibitions and digital platforms, as well as emphasising the need to find an audience as being integral to a sustained and successful practice. There will be opportunities for external visits and the chance to attend events such as the Unseen in Amsterdam, Photo Paris and Photo London in order to enable engagement with the wider photographic community and industry. You will be able to attend talks by visiting professionals to the University, with examples of previous speakers including: Laia Abril, Haley Morris-Cafiero, Cristina de Middel, Guy Martin, Bruno Ceschel, Anouk Kruithof, Ewen Spencer and Elaine Constantine.

This transdisciplinary course offers a space for you to explore comic and concept art holistically. We are a practical course where you can discover the theory, practice, and professional context of comic and concept art through a hands-on and industry-relevant approach.

You will have opportunities to apply your skills across a range of specialisms including character, environment, architecture, prop, mech, vehicle and creature design, storyboarding, narrative illustration, webtoons, comics and graphic novels. The course will enable the development of your professional understanding of studio and freelance practice, whilst acquiring specialist skills within a range of creative careers from concept art for the film and game industries, to comic art and self-published comics.

Your learning experience will be professionally focused throughout the course with opportunities for industry contact and embedded professional practice skills. Established industry links will complement the curriculum through visiting professionals, live briefs, and visiting lecturer workshops. This course promote an awareness of the comic and concept art industry practices in an international context. There are opportunities for collaborative projects within the course and across the University. You will also have a variety of opportunities to collaborate with industry, past examples include Thought Bubble – the leading comic art festival in Europe. You will be supported in developing a range of career options upon graduation.