12 Animation MA Degree Programs

The MA program provides students an opportunity to work in 2D Animation & Stop Motion, 3D Animation, 3D Modeling, or Visual Effects, while focusing on storytelling with an emphasis on exhibiting technical skills and eliciting emotional responses.

The MA Animation programme is built around three core pillars: developing independent perspectives, discovering a distinctive artistic voice and creative method, and cultivating a responsible designer mindset in animation.

The MA animation programme focuses on helping students realize themselves as animated film authors. As our master students come from very different parts of the world and have different educational backgrounds we try to encourage their individual approach to filmmaking.

The MA Animation program at the Royal College of Art has a world-class reputation for artistic, director-led creative practice and innovative risk-taking and our students also explore the increasingly porous borders between animation, virtual reality, augmented reality, or new media art. The program maintains an ethos and environment of experimentation and creativity built on a foundation of social and cultural interrogation and contextual and critical thinking.

This MA in Animation from Kingston University will give you the interdisciplinary skills and knowledge to thrive in rapidly changing cultural, technological and professional environments. On this course, you’ll explore and experiment with a range of interlinked and adaptable technologies, methods and mediums.

This one-year Master of Animation is directed towards realizing your creative potential. You will learn to critically and creatively integrate innovatory studio work with theoretical principles. You explore storytelling in animation and compare this with your own artistic vision and style. You carry out research to discover which developments in the field of animation are relevant to your practice. You acquire experience in studio work and focus on planning, feasibility and production processes, with an emphasis on testing your own artistic freedom in relation to working on commission.

Our MA Animation is designed to provide you with the knowledge and skills to apply innovative and efficient production processes to your animation projects which could include 2D, 3D and Stop Motion or a hybrid of techniques. You’ll study at our MediaCity campus, a hub of digital and media businesses in the north of England and home to the BBC and ITV. You’ll use our state-of-the-art facilities including digital labs, fabrication labs, computer and editing suites and green screen facilities. Throughout the course, there will be opportunities to engage with the industry through networking events and live projects.

The MA Animation course will provide multiple opportunities for graduates from degree programmes linked to the creative visual arts. Graduates with a background in animation will be able to hone their animation skills through an extra top-up year focused on industry practice and principles.

Animation is a dynamic, participatory, and transdisciplinary medium of expression and communication. It finds its application across media and in diverse contexts, be it in short films, art installations, infographics, education, apps, and many more. The modes of production are many and the lines between live-action, animation, and computer-generated imagery have become increasingly blurred. At Srishti Manipal, we consider animation a broad range of practices in manipulated moving images. The animation program is a learning space for self-driven students who are keen on pursuing a line of inquiry and developing their practice in moving-image arts. The MA program provides a framework to support research and the taking forward of one’s practice in animation to newer levels of fluency and sophistication. The curriculum provides strategic inputs in research methods, animation techniques, film language, storytelling, image-making processes, and several opportunities for independent skill enhancement. Students can explore and develop personal styles, artistic visions, and voices depending on their particular lines of inquiry. The focus is on achieving ease and expertise in using the language of animation to pose relevant questions and address diverse topics of interest.

The Illustration and Animation MA aims to expand the digital and physical knowledge of your craft, helping you find your own ‘voice’ and style.

This award enables you to develop creative, practical skills in a range of digital processes that are used in Animation and related fields. Within this course, you can choose to focus on a particular area of animation such as 2D animation, 3D animation or combine the areas to create new forms and ideas from the fusion of techniques and styles.

The MA Animation Production course focuses on practice, theory and professionalism and the ‘critical dialogue’ between them. The MA Animation Production philosophy sees the understanding of the traditional principles of animation as fundamental, but these are critically contextualised in relation to technology, history, theory and professional/studio practice.