Master of Arts in Animation (With placement year)

Kingston University

This module introduces critical making for animators, exploring how image, time, and sound can be orchestrated to research, interpret, communicate, and evoke audience responses. Students are introduced to new material-based media and digital approaches to animation practice, enabling them to critically challenge and expand their existing creative methods. Through experimentation, inquiry, and the process of un-learning, the module encourages the development of confidence, individual creativity, and innovative approaches to practice-based research, animation direction, and animated filmmaking. Students gain critical awareness and practical understanding of animation processes, film language, and image-making techniques, while also examining how moving images are experienced within cultural, temporal, and spatial contexts.

This module introduces ways of theorising contemporary and historical design, enabling students to position their practice within broader professional, social, political, and interdisciplinary contexts. It explores key issues in design and engages students in critical debates, helping them develop the theoretical and conceptual vocabulary needed to articulate and contextualise their work as practitioners. The module encourages critical examination of design theories, histories, and diverse ways of knowing through and about design, while challenging established norms and Eurocentric approaches to knowledge production. Students engage with themes such as decolonisation, design pedagogy, sustainability, participation, accessibility, speculation, and design for social change. Through the exploration of various research methods, the module supports reflection on personal values, ethics, and positionality as a researcher, and how these inform and underpin creative practice.

As screen access increases globally, so too does animation and moving image's ability to pervade all aspects of our lives. Animators are uniquely positioned to utilise these growing opportunities to engage with diverse audiences and create meaningful works that communicate with empathy, offer alternative realities, and tell compelling stories. This module asks you to consider audience: who they are, what you have to say, how to communicate and where to find appropriate and relevant platforms in which to have these dialogues. You will deepen your understanding of animation practice by exploring different approaches to interpreting content, storytelling, and world building. You will identify personal strengths and areas of interest in the development of an individual creative practice. In doing so you will be encouraged to consider where your practice sits within the fields of fiction, non-fiction or experimental moving image and their unique and distinct approaches to film language, critical theory, and research methodologies. This will enable you to, in negotiation with your tutors, produce a production plan for your Extended Research Project, a sustained and independent project that is realised in the module Studio: Extended Research Project for Animation.

This module asks you to think about the role of the designer now and what it might be in the future, recognising that many of the jobs you may undertake do not yet exist and that you may play a role in creating them. You will work on projects both individually and collaboratively, developing the ability to communicate across disciplinary boundaries and engage with diverse environments through hybrid approaches to making and thinking drawn from different contexts, methods, and philosophies. Through elective collaborative projects and real-world scenarios set by external partners, you will explore contemporary challenges shaped by precarity and uncertainty, addressing issues such as climate literacy, design education, and the future of work. In doing so, the module encourages you to anticipate and shape future contexts for your creative practice within the cultural and creative industries and beyond.

This module establishes an individual and situated animation practice through moving image production, direction, and practice-based research. By integrating the knowledge and skills developed throughout the programme, you will develop a distinct critical approach to animation production and position your practice within a real-world context. The module provides the creative autonomy to initiate and complete a self-directed research project, either independently or in collaboration with others. Through the Extended Research Project (capstone project), you will develop and apply a range of transferable skills, including production management, scheduling, leadership, and the direction of collaborative partners. The module also enables you to consolidate your animation practice by engaging in key aspects of professional animation production, including collaborative working, storytelling, directing, animation techniques, idea presentation and communication, and the leadership and management of a film production.