Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Photography

at Leeds Arts University United Kingdom

This transdisciplinary course offers a space for you to explore comic and concept art holistically. We are a practical course where you can discover the theory, practice, and professional context of comic and concept art through a hands-on and industry-relevant approach.

You will have opportunities to apply your skills across a range of specialisms including character, environment, architecture, prop, mech, vehicle and creature design, storyboarding, narrative illustration, webtoons, comics and graphic novels. The course will enable the development of your professional understanding of studio and freelance practice, whilst acquiring specialist skills within a range of creative careers from concept art for the film and game industries, to comic art and self-published comics.

Your learning experience will be professionally focused throughout the course with opportunities for industry contact and embedded professional practice skills. Established industry links will complement the curriculum through visiting professionals, live briefs, and visiting lecturer workshops. This course promote an awareness of the comic and concept art industry practices in an international context. There are opportunities for collaborative projects within the course and across the University. You will also have a variety of opportunities to collaborate with industry, past examples include Thought Bubble – the leading comic art festival in Europe. You will be supported in developing a range of career options upon graduation.

Our MA Animation course gives practitioners a year to create an animated film from start to finish. You will engage in a critical dialogue with practice, theory and the professional aspects of animation.

The course provides space for the animators to make work of cultural value, but understand commercial practices. The curriculum is designed to allow both individual and collaborative practice to take place. However, we positively encourage collaboration as it is a key part of the animation production process, enabling you to undertake ambitious projects.

The course will provide you with the space to develop animation, think and question what animation has the potential to be and how it communicates to an audience. You also will have the opportunity to explore emerging technologies and new approaches to storytelling such as the use of VR and game technologies.

You will be supported by a team with diverse research and practical interests within animation including 2D and 3D animators, modelmakers, scriptwriters and you will also engage with visiting industry professionals. The course will present you with the opportunities to work with other creatives on the course and across other MA courses within the institution. The objective is to enable students to produce engaging work across all forms of animation from animated shorts, documentary and experimental practices.

Our MA Illustration course encourages students to question and expand the nature of their practice, the modes of dissemination and the context in which they situate themselves.

Drawing from multidisciplinary methods of working, students will be confident to explore and extend the concepts of communication, narrative and situated illustration through research, practice and discursive critique.

The course will allow students a stimulating, open thinking space for speculation, collaboration and exploration of the boundaries of what the discipline can be. The course recognises the power of illustration as a tool for looking closely, seeing and communicating in a way that is resistant to trend or restraints of process or medium. The course situates students at the forefront of the illustration research discipline, with authorial and innovative practice at the centre.

The course is supported by a team with diverse research and practical interests from the fields of illustration and its broader visual cultures. Research and dissemination methods will be introduced and developed with the support of visiting industry professionals, workshops, lectures and seminars with opportunity to situate work in relevant professional contexts – publishing, heritage, exhibitions, conferences and events. The course methodology centres around the ideas of observing, questioning and responding to the world, seeking out ideas and examining how these are communicated.

This course provides the framework and critical discourse for the candidate to develop, create, and publish a graphic novel over the course of study.

You will research and develop sequential narrative methods, world-building techniques, and graphic novel publishing and immersive technologies. Engaging with the breadth and depth of what a sequential narrative could be, you will critically examine and contextualise your work in relation to emerging social, political, cultural, and ethical issues. You will work individually and collaboratively to produce a graphic novel that questions the role of the comic artist, audience, distribution and immersive media.

You will be supported by a team with diverse research and practical interests within sequential narrative, comic art and graphic novel culture, working closely with visiting industry professionals. You will challenge what a graphic novel can be, working collaboratively with writers, artists, publishers and readers – the aim is to create externally-engaged, progressive, inclusive, and immersive graphic novels for a diverse and growing readership.

This dynamic course will encourage you to take a creative approach to fashion branding with communication, and develop an individual practice that is underpinned by a social, cultural, political and ethical awareness of this global industry.

You will explore a diverse range of evolving theories and practices that underpin fashion branding, and have opportunities to develop skills in: creative direction and styling, image making, editorial copy, advertising, exhibition design and styling, fashion films, visual merchandising and experiential campaigns.

With new technologies increasingly influencing the industry, you’ll study futurology and investigate theories to apply to augmented and virtual reality, mobile technology user interface design, and digital and social media platform communications that will turn such future-facing ideas into reality.

There will be opportunities to work collaboratively with students on other courses. You will have contact with industry through opportunities such as visiting speakers, live projects, industry briefs and competitions to ensure that you develop professional skills.

Our MA in Digital Fashion offers a unique route for creatives interested in the digital future of fashion. It will enable through practice-led research and new sustainable methods of design and fabrication to reach a new frontier of fashion design.

Fashion is a dynamic field with trends currently pointing to significant innovations in digital design and production to facilitate the creation of multiple digital and physical products from both fashionable and functional briefs. The emergence of additive manufacturing as a new method for manufacturing, along with the increasing acceptance of smart and wearable tech, will allow students with technical abilities and/or understanding of traditional fashion design and pattern cutting skills to push their ideas into new terrain.

Students will use 3D programs, such as CLO 3D, which allows an intuitive method of design, as well as scanners and laser cutters in innovative ways throughout the modules. Graduates enjoy a wide range of employment prospects due to their transferable skills and most relevant digital skills for today’s modern fashion industry. The course supports individuals’ career aspirations and students can tailor their work towards their aim.

Our MA Creative Practice has been devised for creative practitioners, recent graduates and professionals who wish to examine, strengthen and deepen their practice within their own context.

This course offers a bespoke learning experience that is tailored to each student’s practice: a wide range of creative practitioners have all studied on this course.

The course encourages you to pursue an individual research interest for the duration of study which will allow you to examine and strengthen your own practice and place it at the centre of your studies. It addresses the needs of graduates who want to continue to develop their practice and identities in the context of the creative and cultural industries.

Students will maintain contact with other creative practitioners and develop freelance or other career paths in the context of a portfolio career. This course will also prepare those who wish to develop ideas for application to a practice-based PhD.

Our Textile Design* course has an outstanding reputation for producing innovative, professional designers. We look for students who will develop their own ‘handwriting’, both anticipating and setting future trends within this field. We value the importance of personal engagement and celebrate diversity that informs creativity.

You will work alongside your peers where we foster a culture of creativity. The course offers you the opportunity to develop your creative practice through experimental engagement with materials and processes. The course actively engages with contemporary and global issues, and ethical concerns relevant to the practice of printed textile and surface design, such as: sustainability, collaborative practices and innovation in surface and textiles. Tutors are experienced educators, researchers and practitioners in the field of textile and surface design. Through their diverse links you will engage with a breadth of contemporary approaches.

The course is committed to external and professional practices with relevant currency, so that our graduates are fully prepared for direct employment by high street and designer brands, further study, self-employment or business start-ups. You will be given opportunities to  participate in a number of prestigious live briefs, competitions and employment related activities to ensure that you are as best prepared for employment in the creative industries as possible.

The course offers unique opportunities to develop a portfolio of creative and critical writing in a lively and stimulating environment.

Writing is a valuable social currency and opens up doors. The creative possibilities of the written word are enhanced and invigorated by working collaboratively alongside established visual and performing arts courses.

You’ll write in the real world and be encouraged to enter competitions, write for review, write to briefs, and write alongside visual and performative creatives. You will be guided through a range of creative writing landscapes including writing for performance, prose writing, short fiction, art criticism, poetry, script writing, novel writing, new media and zines. You will be encouraged to think locally and globally about the place, purpose and reach of writing, exploring online platforms as well as the potential of the festival, gallery and event space.

You will learn to successfully employ a range of critical thinking skills that will enable you to make sound and valid judgements about the value and role of fiction and non-fiction, becoming a critical reader, thinker and producer of language. You’ll consider the role of writing as a social, cultural, historical and political meaning maker, and explore its contemporary relevance. A positive approach to a writing life is emphasised. You are encouraged to develop cultural awareness and a reflective, self-aware and critically analytical mind-set that will equip you to take on the writing world with a portfolio of transferable skills.

Our MA Worldbuilding brings together practitioners who want to create immersive worlds for entertainment design, production, and research.

You will design a well-researched and richly detailed world in a collaborative and interdisciplinary environment that integrates imagination and emergent technologies. You will have opportunities to explore designing cultural, historical and futuristic worlds through drawing, iterative design, and 3D prototyping.

Candidates are encouraged to position their work within a professional context to help inform the visual output and production method. The function and output of the worldbuilding will be examined through a self-determined approach, whether that’s drawing on concept art, VFX, game art and design, or analogue game design.

Embracing emerging technologies, such as VR and 3D printing, candidates will be able to explore wider contexts of worldbuilding, creating negotiated projects ranging from environment concept art, matte painting, theme park design, VR experiences or table-top game prototypes. The course provides the critical and progressive space to explore the processes and contexts to visualise and build immersive, believable and sustainable storyworlds.