MA Illustration

Course overview

Our MA Illustration explores modern and future-facing definitions of illustration and is an intensive, highly practical course, designed to create flexible practitioners with a keen awareness of the changing needs of the industry. It enables you to develop a unique, industry-ready visual identity - ready for the modern, online marketplace of images.

This course helps you develop your unique voice and to become competitive and recognizable as an individual creator. It also offers early career practitioners an incubation space to challenge and refine their practices, to re-enter the industry with improved confidence and practical e course is uniquely structured to approach a variety of illustrative outcomes including installation, active/participatory illustration, and authorial illustration – all of which are burgeoning and promising areas.

You will have access to industry standard technologies and excellent facilities - including specialist drawing equipment such as Cintiq Wacom Tablets, green screen, motion capture, as well as more traditional facilities such as wet spaces, scanners, drawing tables and light boxes.

How you learn:

You learn about concepts and methods primarily through keynote lectures and tutorials using case studies and examples. Lectures include presentations from guest speakers from industry. Critical reflection is key to successful problem solving and essential to the creative process. You develop your own reflective practice at an advanced level, then test and assess your solutions against criteria that you develop in the light of your research.

How you are assessed:

Various assessment methods are used throughout all of the modules and are specified in the module handbooks. These are primarily what we call in-course assessments, where you submit work during the delivery of the module, rather than sit timed examinations at the end. Arts modules are generally project based and primarily assessed through appraisal of a portfolio of work, often accompanied by a verbal presentation. Creative work is largely developmental and you are assessed on the process by which you achieve your solutions as well as the result, so it is essential that you provide clear evidence of your development work.