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Studying animation at UEL you’ll develop your skills, starting with core animation techniques, building into your own unique way of working. You’ll learn to tell original stories that hold your audience like no other medium can. 

In practical workshops you’ll learn both traditional skills and digital practice, beginning with core skills that will always set you apart from others who haven’t studied at this level. 

You will have the opportunity to develop your traditional skills in life-drawing, 2D drawn animation, stop-motion model animation plus more unusual alternative strategies like paint-on-glass, cut-out paper and sand on glass animation and new hybrid technologies like 3D printing and laser cutting.

You’ll learn to combine these analogue craft skills with digital skills, like digital 2D and 3D animation techniques including Adobe Photoshop, Animate and After Effects, Maya and TV Paint, and become comfortable using graphics tablets to draw digitally.

Alongside this you will learn how to tell your own stories through animation, designing characters and environments, searching and researching, structuring and producing animated stories that will captivate, inspire, educate and entertain.

You’ll learn put all these skills together in an original way that will make you a unique voice in your chosen field.

You’ll learn animation entirely by hands-on, practical workshops, exercises and assignments. The modules and projects are carefully structured to build up your knowledge and confidence in animation craft, storytelling and characterisation. 

You learn the fundamentals of animated movement, moving from simple techniques to expanding your visual language, we introduce you to the most contemporary methods, giving you a toolkit that provides you with the widest creative options to find your creative and professional path.

The academic team who’ll teach you these skills are approachable and knowledgeable leaders in their field. Course leader William Bishop-Stephens and Senior Lecturer Pooja Pottenkulam studied animation together at the internationally respected postgraduate school the Royal College of Art. They are specialist practitioners, with years of international animation experience, working in industry, making films and winning international awards. 

We have visiting lecturers who work the rest of the week in the heart of London’s thriving animation industry. In our Agency modules, you’ll experience working in teams on real world professional briefs.

With an excellent staff-to-student ratio and your own academic advisor, you’ll receive the attention your efforts deserve- something that is lacking in courses with much larger class sizes.

As you learn, through practical exercises and exploring the subject with personal projects and interesting assignments, you’ll also start developing your professional practice by responding in teams to client briefs and live projects. You’ll develop your professional independence as you begin to identify the working practices that will work for you in the future.

By learning how to make short animated films you learn everything about how animation works and how you can bring something new to it. Your final-year graduation film is your own choice of project, using the methods you have developed during the first two years of your degree to showcase your skills and your unique vision to the world.

Graduates from BA Animation at UEL have gone on to enjoy success in various fields, setting up studios, co-operatives, working as freelance creatives or working with London commercial studios like Nexus, Blink and Passion Pictures.

Explore the different career options you can pursue with this degree and see the median salaries of the sector on our Career Coach portal.