Animation MA
Why choose this course?
The MA Animation programme at Kingston School of Art takes a creative and director-led approach to interdisciplinary moving image production. This course will give you the skills and attributes to thrive in a professional environment shaped by rapid cultural and technological change. It will introduce you to a wide range of interlinked and adaptable technologies and methods including 2D and 3D animation, virtual reality and augmented reality. You will use animation methods to interpret knowledge, stories, ideas and data into visual or experiential outputs that communicate complexity with empathy.
MA Animation supports the development of an individual practice informed by a culture that values research and collaboration. Research is seen as integral to the act of critical making through experimentation with physical, digital and virtual tools and technologies embracing a diverse range of multidisciplinary approaches.
Through tutorials, lectures, seminars, workshops and research projects, you will gain the critical tools, knowledge and confidence needed to contribute to the development of the subject and its practice. Every student will have the opportunity to complete an extended research project, typically a film.
| Mode | Duration | Start date |
|---|---|---|
| Full time | 1 year | September 2025 |
| Full time | 2 years including professional placement | September 2025 |
| Part time | 2 years | September 2025 |
| Main Location | Kingston School of Art, Knights Park |
Reasons to choose Kingston
- You will be given creative agency to develop an individual and critical approach to advanced animation practice.
- An interdisciplinary approach is valued and promoted through shared modules and collaborative projects that ask you to look beyond disciplinary limits.
- The curriculum is designed to support you gain 'Future Skills' and attributes such as creative problem solving, reasoning, and emotional intelligence.
The Art School Experience
As part of Kingston School of Art, students on this course benefit from joining a creative community where collaborative working and critical practice are encouraged.
Our workshops and studios are open to all disciplines, enabling students and staff to work together, share ideas and explore multi-disciplinary making.
What you will study
Through tutorials, field trips, lectures, seminars, workshops and research projects, you will gain the technical skills, critical tools, knowledge and confidence needed to contribute to the development of the subject and its practice. You will be asked to examine your own practice and identify existing practice-based research methods, which will then be developed by introducing discipline specific notions of rigour, originality, ethics, positioning and inclusivity. Modules have been designed and aligned to ensure that students are able to make intellectual links between practice, critical theory and real-world scenarios. In doing so, this programme prioritises the development of an individual practitioner and their creative work.
There is an emphasis on independent and self-directed learning where students are given autonomy to develop a practice that supports their aspirations and ambitions. Skills in critical reflection and analysis provide you with the tools necessary to make decisions about you practice and learning trajectory. Students are provided with the opportunity to initiate, propose, and realise an Extended Research Project (Capstone Project), typically a film, that is ambitious in scale and scope. Studio modules include development of animation skills, concepts and practice through project work and utilise the studio as a site for making. Reading modules focus on critical and contextual theory or issues and positioning practice critically. Presentation modules orientate students within a professional landscape and include preparation for employment through development of future skills and career planning. The three Studio modules are specific to MA Animation and the Reading and Presenting modules are shared with MA Illustration and MA Graphic Design programmes.
Please note that this is an indicative list of modules and is not intended as a definitive list. Those listed here may also be a mixture of core and optional modules.
Year 1
Optional placement year
Core modules
Studio: Critical Making for Animation
30 credits
This module introduces critical making for animators. We explore how image, time and sound can be orchestrated to research, interpret, communicate, and evoke audience response. You will be introduced to new material-based media and digital approaches to animation practice that will enable to you critically challenge your existing animation practice.
Throughout this module you will be encouraged to play, interrogate, and make connections, through a process of un-learning to build confidence and develop individual and innovative approaches to practice-based research, animation direction and animated film making. You will gain necessary critical awareness and practical understanding of animation processes, film languages, and approaches to image making as well as considering how your moving images are experienced culturally, temporally and spatially.
As part of personal and professional development, collaboration is integrated into the curriculum alongside a supportive studio culture where knowledge is shared and risk taking encouraged. Critical reflection is presented as key to the development of a robust research practice and necessary to inform practical decision making.
Reading: Critical Positions
30 credits
This module introduces ways of theorising contemporary and historical design to enable you to locate your practice within wider professional, social and political contexts and an interdisciplinary framework. You will investigate key current issues within design and participate in urgent critical debates, developing a theoretical and conceptual vocabulary with which to position what you do as a practitioner.
You will not only develop your understanding of design theory and histories but critically examine different ways of knowing about, and through, design. You are encouraged to question established norms and challenge Eurocentric models of knowledge production, engaging with discourses of decolonisation, design pedagogy, sustainability, participation, accessibility, speculation and design for social change. Exploring a range of different research methods will support you to reflect on your own position, values and ethics as a researcher, and to articulate how that underpins your practice.
Studio: Situating Practice for Animation
30 credits
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 module Studio: Extended Research Project for Animation.
Presentation: Future Directions
30 credits
This module asks you to think about the role of the designer now and what it might be in the future. It takes the position that many of the jobs you may have in the future do not yet exist – it is you that will create them.
You will work on projects individually and collectively that ask you to communicate across disciplinary boundaries in diverse environments with hybrid ways of making and thinking drawn from different contexts, methods and philosophies. Real-world scenarios set by external partners will be examined through elective collaborative projects that situate your creative practice within the contemporary paradigms of precarity and uncertainty, providing a space to address issues such as climate literacy, design education and the future of work, and in doing so anticipate contexts for your practice within the cultural and creative industries and beyond.
Studio: Extended Research Project for Animation
60 credits
This module establishes an individual and situated animation practice through moving image production, direction and practice-based research. By assimilating the learning established so far you will have an individual critical position to animation production and establish a real-world context for your practice. You will be given creative agency to initiate and complete your self-directed and research project either individually or through collaboration with others. The Extended Research Project (capstone project) requires you to recognise, act on and engage in a range of transferable skills e.g., management of production schedules or the direction of collaborative partners.
You will consolidate your animation practice by taking part in the necessary aspects of professional animation production. This will include collaborative working whilst gaining confidence in storytelling, directing and animation skills, presenting and communicating ideas and the leadership and management of a film production.
Many postgraduate courses at Kingston University allow students to do a 12-month work placement as part of their course. The responsibility for finding the work placement is with the student; we cannot guarantee the work placement, just the opportunity to undertake it. As the work placement is an assessed part of the course, it is covered by a student's Student Route visa.
Find out more about the postgraduate work placement scheme.
Module
Professional Placement
120 credits
The Professional Placement module is a core module for those students following a masters programme that incorporates professional placement learning, following completion of 120 credits. It provides you with the opportunity to apply your knowledge and skills to an appropriate working environment, and to develop and enhance key employability skills and subject-specific professional skills in your chosen subject. You may wish to use the placement experience as a platform for your subsequent major project module, and would be expected to use it to help inform your decisions about future careers.
Entry requirements
Teaching and assessment
Students will benefit from a variety of different learning and teaching approaches including brief-led project work, workshops that encourage creative experimentation and individual critical reflection. MA Animation embraces this approach through a peer-led learning, collaborative approach to animation production and discussion groups and seminars. We take a dialogic and discursive approach to learning and teaching, through peer-led learning, collaborative approach to animation production and discussion groups and seminars as well as opportunities to co-construct the curriculum. An elective range of assessment strategies and methods allows students to take responsibility for their own learning.
Kingston School of Art has an established an ethos of Thinking Through Making, underpinned by a policy that supports equal access for all students to the 2D and 3D workshops. Students are encouraged to explore new and unfamiliar processes and techniques and use these to experiment and innovate within their own disciplines and individual creative practices
Who teaches this course?
You'll be taught by academics who are practising designers and researchers. There is also a regular programme of professional lectures and studio visits. Postgraduate students may also contribute to the teaching of seminars under the supervision of the module leader.
Facilities
You will benefit from:
- Well-equipped lecture theatres, seminar rooms and workshops
- The library's extensive book and journal collection, including over 150,000 slides and visual references dating back to the 1600s
- The dedicated Graduate Centre on campus – including IT facilities, seminar rooms and social spaces.
The University has its own on-site galleries, including:
- Dorich House – home of the sculptor Dora Gordine
- The Stanley Picker Gallery – featuring exhibitions of contemporary art.
There are also the following facilities to augment your studies:
Fees for this course
Additional costs
Depending on the programme of study, there may be extra costs that are not covered by tuition fees which students will need to consider when planning their studies. Tuition fees cover the cost of your teaching, assessment and operating University facilities such as the library, access to shared IT equipment and other support services. Accommodation and living costs are not included in our fees.
Where a course has additional expenses, we make every effort to highlight them. These may include optional field trips, materials (e.g. art, design, engineering), security checks such as DBS, uniforms, specialist clothing or professional memberships.
After you graduate
Graduates from the Illustration Animation Department permeate the animation industry all over the world.
- They direct animation, motion graphics, adverts, pop promos and instructional educational films that engage hugely diverse audiences.
- They are directors and showrunners on animated series for Netflix and Cartoon Network, Aardman, Nexus, Buck in New York and LA.
- They start their own animation studios, such as Moth and Blink/BlinkInk, Catfish Collective or Arc. They also work together as small collectives often in turn employing our graduates.
- They can be found in visual effects houses like Framestore and Moving Picture Company. By using interrelated skills they work not only as animators but also art directors/designers/storyboard artists for the live-action film industry.
- They also teach and lead higher education initiatives, in the UK and internationally, that develop the potential of how visual moving image can contribute to global culture and societies.
Course changes and regulations
The information on this page reflects the currently intended course structure and module details. To improve your student experience and the quality of your degree, we may review and change the material information of this course. Course changes explained.
Programme Specifications for the course are published ahead of each academic year.
Regulations governing this course can be found on our website.
