Illustration & Animation - MA

​The role of the illustrator or animator is not ephemeral, temporary or mere entertainment. It is ecological, cultural, political and technological, challenging the momentum of the twenty-first century. Illustrators and animators must deploy their skills and imagination to respond to the wider political and cultural climate with more urgency and vigour than ever.

Imagination is a powerful force, able to create and configure new ideas and develop dreams for both the individual and humanity as a whole. This Master’s degree course provides illustrators and animators with the skills and knowledge to effectively harness this power in their unique practice and their proposed project.

The MA in Illustration and Animation at Cardiff Met will appeal to graduates of any discipline of the visual arts, as well as professionals looking to sharpen their critical and theoretical skills.

You will explore the role of the illustrator or animator through speculative methods in a transdisciplinary environment.

Through a combination of self-directed studio practice, lectures, seminar sessions, and reading groups, you will be closely and individually guided in the exploration of your own practice through your proposed project, as a critical and re-directive process.

We look to recruit brave, speculative, imaginative, and dedicated creative graduates who share our leading-edge-research concern for illustration and/or animation, and our instinct to imagine and explain.

Career

The MA Illustration & Animation programme enables students to enhance their careers as, or to become, established illustrators, artists, or animators, leading towards a career, a PhD, or to a Professional Doctorate in either art or design. Cardiff School of Art and Design offers Professional Doctoral programs in both Art and Design.

The MA Illustration & Animation programme is designed to enable students to achieve the attributes of greater flexibility, adaptability, and individual responsibility and autonomy as professional artists or researchers. The course aims to develop individuality, creativity, self-reliance, initiative, and the ability to perform in rapidly changing environments as well as increasing competence with research skills and methods which will make graduates highly employable as academics and/or researchers, or enable them to develop an active and sustained practice as illustrators and/or animators.

The MA Illustration & Animation course enables graduates, mid-career and professional practitioners from within and outside of the disciplines of Illustration & Animation to negotiate and examine visual communication strategies of practice whilst being able to create their own hybrids of practice that can further enhance the territory that illustration and/or animation can occupy.

All students receive individual PDP tutorials to support employability and life-long learning. Students will be expected to maintain learning journals evidencing continuous visual documentation that integrates opportunities for self-reflection in order to help them develop as effective and confident learners.

At the conclusion of the programme, a very high percentage of MA graduates establish or continue their professional practice, enabled by the links they have made with design studios or organisations associated with the visual arts and design. Some elect to continue with their Illustration & Animation studies at CSAD by undertaking a PhD.