Bachelor of Science (Hons) in Computer Animation and Visual Effects with Placement Year

at Manchester Metropolitan University United Kingdom

Our MSc Finance and Business course is designed to give you the chance to explore modern business principles, techniques and contextual conditions.

You’ll study topics relating to international finance processes, focusing on assessing performance management, risk and management accounting. Understanding organisations as a whole will help you provide recommendations and make an impact.

Creating art for games is both specialised and rewarding – a mix of technical know-how and creative thinking that can make a huge impact on the look, feel and experience of any computer game. A game artist can create entire living and breathing virtual worlds, dynamic animated characters and beautiful atmospheric effects in one of the most challenging and exciting roles in the creative industry. Our BA (Hons) Games Art course offers this mix, with core skills and vital understanding that will equip you for your future career in the games industry.

While it’s a specialist course offering a specialist skill set, being part of the School of Digital Arts (SODA) offers the unique opportunity to work with others from across our broad creative community. By working in collaboration with students of photography, animation, sound design and more, as well as students from the Department of Computing and Mathematics, you’ll get a taste of the kind of cross-disciplinary teamwork that’s essential in the fast-moving digital sector. It’s not only a creative environment, but a well-equipped one too. SODA has been purpose-built to develop industry-standard skills, so it offers industry-standard facilities – giving you every opportunity to get to grips with professional-grade development and design technology.

Just as SODA provides a vibrant, dynamic environment for studying games art, Manchester provides an exciting, creative setting. The city is not only home to one of the largest media and creative sectors outside of London, but also has a rich history of video games creation, from Ocean Software in the 1980’s to TT Games and much more today. On our doorstep, you can find renowned CG, visual effects and VR/AR agencies like Flipbook and Carbon Digital, not to mention the BBC’s entire digital and games teams. In short, it’s much more than an exciting city for students, for qualified, well-rounded game artists, Manchester can provide the perfect launch pad for a rewarding career.

Placement options

SODA Placement Year
As part of your studies with SODA, you will have the chance to take a year working on placement within the industry. During your year, you will spend at least 36 weeks working within an organisation in the industry, developing workplace skills, practical understanding and genuine industry experience.

Right from the start, our product design engineering degree is all about developing your creativity and problem-solving skills. Even the introduction is a team-based design-and-build challenge – reflecting the kind of project-based, hands-on approach to learning you’ll experience throughout your time with us.

It’s a degree that provides the specialist knowledge and expertise required for a career in commercial product design, introducing you to industry-relevant methodologies, materials and production methods. You’ll also look at the influence on the design of history, culture, markets, materials and lifestyles. And in our specialist laboratories, you’ll get to grips with some of the latest technologies, such as 3D printing and rapid prototyping.

More generally, you’ll learn to look at the world around you through the eyes of a designer, as you establish the fundamentals of design and technology, together with the relationship that products have with their users and their environment.

Study product design engineering with us and in your final year you’ll be ready to put these skills into practice in a new product design challenge and an individual project. You’ll then have the chance to showcase your work in front of industry representatives at the department’s degree show as you look to kick-start your career in this challenging and rewarding field.

Placement options

All of our degrees offer the chance to spend a year getting a taste of professional life. If you choose to go down this route, your degree will take one year longer, with the third year spent working in industry. These optional placements not only give you the opportunity to develop your core skills and learn about how a business really operates in your industry, but also shows employers that you’re ready to get to work. We offer a range of services to help you find the right placement, including employer presentations, advice and placement fairs.

You’ll consider theories about the meaning of existence, divinity, who we are as individuals, and our relation to the transcendent from Eastern, African, and Western cultural perspectives and religious institutions. You’ll explore how these theories have shaped our ideas about humanity, and the challenges the modern world poses. And along the way, you’ll find your philosophical voice and develop a rich set of analytical and critical skills invaluable for your future – with the power to influence others and drive change.

As a philosophy student you will be joining a hub of research-active philosophers with local, national and international impact, with many of them being invited to present at major international conferences and workshops. Our staff work across key areas including metaethics, normative ethics and philosophy of religion – with this expertise behind us, we can give you a rounded, balanced understanding of the subject.

You may also have the opportunity to spend your third year studying overseas, including in the US, or on placement, with opportunities available in Britain or abroad.

Placement options
You may have the chance to spend a year getting a taste of professional life. It is an opportunity to develop core skills and explore how this course can relate to the graduate world, and it shows employers that you’re ready to get to work.

You are free to choose placement opportunities from a wide range of roles both in the UK and abroad. Students choosing this option are supported by a dedicated placement team who provide links to employers through presentations, events, and fairs, and provide a specialist program of guidance on recruitment procedures including CV and interview preparation, as well as work readiness and working overseas.

Politics is the study of power and how power operates in all its forms: through individuals, structures, internationally and domestically. Its principal focus is on power relations among individuals, social groups and nations. Philosophers specialise in critically making sense of ourselves and everything around us. Their currency is rigorous argumentation about subjects from consciousness to the nature of power relations themselves.

The Joint Honours degree will provide you with the skills to explore the philosophical and political landscape of human consciousness throughout time and place. You will gain a critically informed grasp of political and current affairs, seeing beyond the news headlines to the real issues of politics. By studying this course, you will be strongly equipped to understand ideologies and be in a better position to comment upon and understand what the politicians are really saying.

A wide variety of options means that you can pursue your own interests - with things becoming increasingly flexible as you progress through the course. We also offer opportunities to learn with a language from your second year of study. With practical skills training, including advanced analytical approaches, as well as possible opportunities to study abroad - with all the experience that brings - this degree opens doors to a range of interesting and rewarding career possibilities and provides the skills to progress to higher research programs.

Placement options

You may have the chance to spend a year getting a taste of professional life. It is an opportunity to develop core skills and explore how this course can relate to the graduate world, and it shows employers that you’re ready to get to work.

You are free to choose placement opportunities from a wide range of roles both in the UK and abroad. Students choosing this option are supported by a dedicated placement team who provide links to employers through presentations, events, and fairs, and provide a specialist program of guidance on recruitment procedures including CV and interview preparation, as well as work readiness and working overseas.

The MA in Graphic Design & Art Direction program is designed for creative practitioners who wish to advance their knowledge, skills and specialism within the field of visual communication.

Each student will develop a practice-led investigation within this broader context, actively constructing a bespoke body of design knowledge which combines theory, practice, research, entrepreneurship and innovation from a wide range of creative activities.

They will be taught to question and expand their creative thinking and generic design process by developing their analytical skills; engaging in critical dialogues; work independently, collaboratively and interdisciplinary; experimenting in a range of directions before delivering professional and innovative outcomes to defined audiences with confidence. All creative activities are supported by strategic thinking, robust methodologies and informed by practice-led research.

From early years practitioners, teachers and leaders in education, to local authority, health services and aspiring researchers, our course appeals to a variety of backgrounds and professions. You will be joining a diverse and thriving community of postgraduate students from the UK and across the world.

You’ll examine key concepts, global issues and debates in education, from performance measurement to ethnicity, class and gender. Explore national and international policy, and consider the impact of social inequalities, and the role of politics in education.

We aim to empower you to approach your own research with confidence. You’ll extend your understanding of research techniques, including empirical and desk-based projects, to prepare you for completing your own dissertation. Throughout the project, you will have access to support from active researchers in our internationally renowned Educational and Social Research Institute (ESRI).

We’ve designed this postgraduate course to allow you to specialise and focus on areas of education that interest you. You can specialise by choosing an option unit based on work by world-class researchers in the Faculty of Health and Education. Your option units may include topics such as literacy and language, educational philosophy, learning in informal settings, or international perspectives in education.

When you graduate, you’ll achieve a master's degree that highlights areas of your personal and professional interest.

BA (Hons) Filmmaking is a practice-based course giving you the creative freedom to develop your voice through the dynamic language of film.

Our learning environment incorporates a unique mix of digital art and film school philosophies, empowering you to express your ideas and stories through narrative fiction, documentary, artists’ moving image and new media. You will specialise in original ideas from unique perspectives, with the potential for your work to be screened in international venues.

Studying at the School of Digital Arts means learning beyond the usual limits. You’ll be part of a vibrant creative community that spans a range of disciplines, from photography and animation, to music and sound design. It’s an environment designed for collaboration – a place where you can push the boundaries of filmmaking, explore the directions that interest you most and develop a broad skill set made for today’s digital arts and media sector. Here, you’ll have access to a vast range of specialist resources and purpose-built facilities, as well as a wealth of opportunities for developing your professional skills, from work experience placements and industry competitions to guest lectures and collaborations with organisations.

The UK film and television industry is a global success story and Manchester is the perfect place to write your own chapter. It’s a major media city, second only to London. The likes of the BBC and ITV are on our doorstep at MediaCityUK, while the city is also home to a thriving, bustling digital production sector, from innovative start-ups to established production companies. For today, that means you’ll have the chance to work on live industry projects – developing practical skills and valuable experience. For tomorrow, that means you’ll graduate in one of the most exciting cities in Europe for starting a career in the creative and digital industries.

Placement options

SODA Placement Year
As part of your studies with SODA, you will have the chance to take a year working on placement within the industry. During your year, you will spend at least 36 weeks working within an organisation in the industry, developing workplace skills, practical understanding and genuine industry experience.

If you're interested in the way in which we communicate and how it can influence people, studying linguistics will help you unravel how language is inextricably linked to who we are. Linguistics is a popular course taken on its own or in combination with English or a modern language. It is devoted to the scientific study of natural language and concerned with how languages evolve, are structured and what they have in common. It also studies how languages are acquired and used.

Our program enables you to develop a sound knowledge of both theoretical and applied perspectives. It places emphasis on English, with examples from other languages where appropriate. The core elements of the course teach you about sentence structure (syntax), meaning (semantics and pragmatics), forensic linguistics, and phonetics and phonology. You will also learn about language use and variation in different social contexts, the media, and intercultural settings. Communicating effectively, critical thinking and developing rigorous analytical skills are valuable assets in the job market and are transferable to various professions.

In French, emphasis is placed on communicating effectively and developing transferable skills such as translating, interpreting, and interview techniques and the practical language classes embrace speaking, listening, reading and writing.

If you take French as a major or equal subject you will have the opportunity to spend your third year abroad in France. If French is your minor subject, the course will be three years with no study abroad.

Placement options

• If French is your major or equal subject, you will have the opportunity to spend year 3 studying in France and we will assist you in choosing from a wide choice of partner universities where you can study.

Illustrators work within many disciplines, and are able to visualise, elucidate and extend the meaning of a given field of knowledge or information and communicate ideas and narratives to specific audiences.

The contemporary practice of illustration is multidisciplinary, incorporating drawing, printmaking, traditional and digital media, model making, performance and collaborative, interactive practices.

The MA in Illustration is designed for creative practitioners who wish to advance their knowledge, skills and specialism within this expansive field.

Each student will develop a practice-led investigation within this broader context, actively constructing a bespoke body of design knowledge which combines theory, practice, research, entrepreneurship and innovation from a wide range of creative and research-driven activities.

They will be taught to question and expand their creative thinking and generic design process by developing their analytical skills; engaging in critical dialogues; work independently, collaboratively and interdisciplinary; experimenting in a range of directions before delivering professional and innovative outcomes to defined audiences with confidence. All creative activities are supported by strategic thinking, robust methodologies and informed by practice-led research.