Course overview

This is a full-time, three-year course specialising in creative animations, combining artistry and technology. It is designed for creative technical artists specialising in 2D or 3D animation.

Computer animation encompasses art, humanities, psychology and narrative with the technical aspects of modelling, animation, special effects and 3D graphics. It covers both the practical and theoretical aspects of modern and traditional animation and the real-time game animation industry. Strong artistic and technological abilities are essential, as well as an ability to listen and think independently and take direction.

The philosophy at the heart of this course is to produce ‘T-shaped people’, such that they maintain the depth and focus of the animation discipline, but have the ‘cross bar’ of art and technical issues that drive the understanding necessary for solving real-world problems. This interdisciplinary approach is not just a joining of these two commitments, but also makes these ideas work in real-life organisations.

It helps to have some experience of computing. Any experience in art and design, media or communication studies, music or music technology will also be a great help. However, what really counts is motivation, creativity and a sense of excitement. Mature students are encouraged to seek an interview to discuss experience and qualifications. You will also need to be capable of learning the technical aspects of animation and animation software, as well as concept design and visual research.

A year in industry

We have an active placement scheme within the department to support your experience and a dedicated team, Purple Door Careers and Recruitment, who can support you in finding a placement. We actively encourage placement abroad.

Course content

This course focuses on mirroring many industrial processes and creative practices developed from meetings and discussions with our industrial partners.

Assessment is varied and reflects the nature of the material. We look for a balance between producing practical work and understanding the process of design, development and implementation.

Year one

In your first year you will study the following units:

Software Skills for Media: you will learn the essentials of media software tools such as Photoshop (for creating 2D images and textures) and an editing package to edit your animations.

Issues in the Use of Computing Technology: you will examine issues such as copyright, piracy, hacking, social engineering and codes of conduct. In addition, you will learn research and writing skills, as well as develop an appreciation of the complexity of issues in the wider world.

Drawing for Creative Technologies: this unit is as much about learning to see as it is about drawing. Artistic students are taught basic skills they can build on. Technically minded students are given the opportunity to fully appreciate the skills of the artists, enabling better communication and understanding between artists and issues.

Scripting: this unit is as much about learning as it is about scripting. Technical students are taught basic skills that they can build on, and artistic students are given the opportunity to fully appreciate technical skills, enabling better communication and understanding between artist and programmer.

Representation of Information and Project Management for Creative Technologies: giving you the opportunity to explore information architecture and interface design, this unit will help you develop project management skills by working on individual and group projects.

Skills for Animation: covering a hands-on approach to the principles of animation in 2D and 3D, this unit adopts a traditional approach to animation to inform current trends in this area. It also covers the history of animation and will help you develop skills that you can build on in subsequent units. It will also involve working with scriptwriters.

Option units include:

• Visual Development and Resolution
• Programming for Animation

Year two

In your second year you will study the following units:

Further Modelling and Animation: in this unit you will build 3D objects and animate them using traditional modelling techniques.

Animating Characters: you will build up your animation skills in this unit, rigging, modelling and animating characters for games or film.

Texture and Lighting Models: you will learn more advanced lighting, texturing and creating shaders for 3D models for games and film. You will also investigate HDRI and other related areas.

Careers for Creative Technology Students: this unit will start you thinking about work. You will write a CV, research the jobs market and prepare to look for a job.

Mathematics for Computer Graphics: this unit covers some basic mathematics (there are no difficult concepts), which is generally useful and specifically relevant in other units.

Option units include:

• 2D Animation and Rendering
• Ancillary Modelling
• Further Programming for Animation
• Drawing for Animation
• Interactive Content and Design
• Preparatory Project

Year three

In your final year you will study the following units:

Creative Technology Project: this is a year-long project that will help you develop excellence in your portfolio. You will need to specialise in an area that you would like to develop. Past students have chosen to create an animation for entertainment, advertising or scientific visualisations. Other examples include developing tools for animation and games, while others have written about new and emerging animation industries.

Real-time Group Project: in this year-long unit you will be put together in teams comprising students with a range of different skills (design, management, programming, art) and you will create an artefact featuring real-time animated graphics according to a brief set by the lecturer. For example, a previous task was set to create an artefact featuring Portsmouth's landmark Spinnaker Tower, but acting in a similar way to Channel 4's distinctive idents.

Developing a Career in the Creative Technologies: building on previous units, you will focus on what job you would like to do and how you can start working towards it.

Creative Media: using the knowledge and skills gained in the creative group project, you will push your skills to a new level.

Developing a Portfolio: this unit covers creating a portfolio that shows your work to the best advantage and how you can present it for best impact.

Option units include:

• 3D Rendering
• Tools for Animation
• Animation and Modelling for Facial Animation

Teaching and assessment

The University of Portsmouth has a long and distinguished record of running successful degree courses in both IT and business management. The south east is the entertainment and IT centre in England.

Our emphasis is on creativity, understanding and professional practice. In a creative, collaborative media group, it is rarely possible to solve increasingly complex problems individually. It needs a thinking capability that encompasses the entire process from art to project management and good communication. As a result we encourage a varied and interdisciplinary approach (for example, we invite scriptwriters to work with you from year one).

Additionally, we pay a limited number of our students to be trained in our state-of-the-art motion capture suite and run this as a closely supervised student resource. Practical experience is emphasised throughout the course and you will be encouraged to put your ideas into practice.

You will be taught through a mixture of traditional lectures, practicals and seminars. Assessment is geared towards the subject matter in a way that encourages understanding, allowing you to develop your skills.

Career prospects

We have been fortunate to receive high praise from our graduate employers and have graduates working in diverse areas, from games and animation to post-production.

We have a range of industrial sponsors who have offered final-year student prizes. These include Autodesk (one of the biggest suppliers of 3D software), Avid, and Sony (SCEE) UK. We are active members of academic and industrial summits and have become a preferred university with several large media multinational organisations because of the quality of our graduates.

This course provides a complete package for those wishing to obtain well-rounded skills for use in the media industry, but with an emphasis on graphics and animation for use in areas such as business, commerce and education. You will have the option to work in the following fields:

• animation design
• 3D and 2D graphics
• traditional animation
• creating tools for animation
• real-time animation
• motion capture
• virtual reality
• project planning

Facilities and features

We teach on state-of-the-art hardware and software for animation. This includes our motion capture suite, stereo 3D cinema and computer software, all supported by a team of dedicated technical staff. We also have a virtual learning environment to augment our face-to-face teaching sessions and hold a range of support videos that are produced commercially and in-house.

Our live web TV channel is run by students and academic staff to enable live feed of student work over the internet. We also nurture student enterprise and businesses through our Centre for Enterprise and the support of Purple Door Careers and Recruitment; this formula has helped develop some very successful businesses for our students. However, our main asset is the excellence of our staff, many of whom have been employed directly from the games and film industry.

Entry requirements

View all the entry requirements for BSc (Hons) Computer Animation for the academic year 2012/13 (opens in new window).