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What makes Animation at Worcester special?

Animation at university breathes life into the once static form; a sequence of drawings, a computer mesh, an armature inside a stop-motion puppet or even sand on a lightbox. The possibilities are only limited by your imagination.

At Worcester you can set your animated spirit free. Enjoy three years of specialist training and personal creative development, with a dedicated course for the independent animator, tailored to individual aims.

Overview

Overview

Key features

  • Industry-standard facilities, including state-of-the-art software and motion capture technologies. Maya, Adobe suite, Toon Boom, Stop Motion suites with Dragon Frame, camera and lighting rigs and access to a Motion Capture lab. You can also hire out professional film/sound equipment as well as the sound and video studios. Our technicians are friendly and always here to help
  • Our small class sizes guarantee one to one guidance and mentoring in a close-knit community of peers and supportive staff
  • Excellent industry links include our panel of BAFTA winning talent from our region (Dice Productions, Yaminations and Second Home Studios), who provide support and real-world experience for our students
  • The strong cross-curricular ethos enables this course to be taken as a joint degree with subjects such as Illustration, Game Art, Graphic Design, Film Production or Screenwriting
  • Study animation in all forms: 2D, 3D, traditional, digital and stop motion; with projects in industry-grade facilities

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Entry requirements

Entry requirements

104
UCAS tariff points

Entry requirements

104 UCAS tariff points (for example, BCC at A Level).

The normal minimum entry requirement for undergraduate degree courses is the possession of 4 GCSEs (Grade C/4 or above) and a minimum of 2 A Levels (or equivalent Level 3 qualifications). 

T Levels may be used to meet the entry tariff requirements for this course. Find out more about T levels as UCAS tariff points here.

Other information

If you have any questions about entry requirements, please contact the Admissions Office on 01905 855111 or email admissions@worc.ac.uk for advice.

Further information about the UCAS Tariff can be obtained from http://www.ucas.com

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Some recent student work

Course content

Course content

Our courses are informed by research and current developments in the discipline and feedback from students, external examiners and employers. Modules do therefore change periodically in the interests of keeping the course relevant and reflecting best practice. The most up-to-date information will be available to you once you have accepted a place and registered for the course. If there are insufficient numbers of students interested in an optional module, this might not be offered, but we will advise you as soon as possible and help you choose an alternative. 

Year 1

Mandatory

  • Animation Practices  
  • Concept Art Practices

Year 2

Mandatory

  • Animation Production: Narrative Work Flows

Optional

  • Animation Techniques and practices
  • Stop Motion
  • Music Video Production
  • Experimental Film Production

Year 3

Mandatory

  • Animation Negotiated Production 2

Optional

  • Animation Negotiated Production 3
  • Animation Specialist Development
  • Pre-Production Practices (Dissertation equivalent module)
  • Professional Practice

"The course at Worcester expanded my understanding of animation, helped me realise my potential, gave me creativity, purpose and focus, and helped me define my career."

Richard Smith, 3rd year Animation, Intern at Aardman

Teaching and assessment

Teaching and assessment

The University places emphasis on enabling students to develop the independent learning capabilities that will equip you for lifelong learning and future employment, as well as academic achievement. A mixture of independent study, teaching and academic support through the personal academic tutoring system enables you to reflect on progress and build up a profile of skills, achievements and experiences that will enable you to flourish.

Teaching

You are taught through a combination of interactive workshops, lectures, and Studio practices. Interactive workshops take a variety of formats and are intended to enable the application of learning through discussion and small group activities. Studio practices focus on developing subject specific skills that is applied to individual and group project work. A range of tutor-directed tasks and further reading will serve to structure your independent study and prepare you to undertake the major project that is to be assessed.

Structured individual tutorial support will be available to all students in order to provide feedback on the set tasks and to assist with planning and organisation of the main project. In addition, meetings with personal academic tutors are scheduled on at least 4 occasions in the first year and three occasions in each of the other years of a course.

You have an opportunity to undertake a semester long placement in the second year of the course, supervised for agreed projects by a work-based mentor and a University tutor. You use industry-standard design software and have access to computer suits as well as animation studios facilities throughout the course. In addition to this specialist hardware such as lightboxes, Wacom tablets and cameras are available to you through the stores and our in house booking system.

Contact time

In a typical week you will have around four teaching sessions adding up to 15-16 contact hours of teaching. The precise contact hours will depend on the optional modules selected and in the final year you will normally have slightly less contact time in order to do more independent study. Typically contact time will be structured around:

  • 8 hours of interactive workshops
  • 2 hours of lectures
  • 6 hours of supervised Studio practices

In year two 4 days per week will be spent in placement for one semester

Independent self-study

In addition to the contact time, you are expected to undertake around 22 hours of personal self-study per week. Typically, this will translate into time practicing, researching and preparing for sessions; this will help develop your understanding and engagement with the module. Guidance on readings, lecture notes and video tutorial will be provided on Virtual learning environment as appropriate.

Independent learning is supported by a range of excellent learning facilities, including the Hive and library resources, the virtual learning environment, and extensive electronic learning resources.

Animation studios and specialist resources are also available through advance booking to aid independent learning.

Assessment

The course provides opportunities to test understanding and learning informally through the completion of practice or 'formative' assignments. Each module has one or more formal or 'summative' assessments which are graded and count towards the overall module grade. Assessment methods include a range of coursework assessments such as reports, portfolios, presentations and a final year production project.

The precise assessment requirements for an individual student in an academic year will vary according to the mandatory and optional modules taken.

Feedback

You will receive feedback on practice assessments and on formal assessments undertaken by coursework. Feedback is intended to support learning and you are encouraged to discuss it with personal academic tutors and module tutors as appropriate.

We aim to provide feedback on formal course work assessments within 20 working days of hand-in.

Programme specification

For comprehensive details on the aims and intended learning outcomes of the course, and the means by which these are achieved through learning, teaching and assessment, please download the latest programme specification document.

Meet the team

You will be taught by a teaching team whose expertise and knowledge are closely matched to the content of the modules on the course. The team includes senior academics, professional practitioners with industry experience, demonstrators and technical officers.

Teaching is informed by the research and consultancy, and all of the course lecturers have a higher education teaching qualification or are Fellows of the Higher Education Academy.

Omid Ghanat Abady

Omid Ghanat-Abady

Animation Course Leader Omid became a university lecturer after working as a freelance illustrator.

Omid's research activity is diverse, ranging from heritage visualisation to participation in the making of independent films. His interest centres on the question of character, with character design and animation having informed the bulk of his work. Sam Moore’s An Eyeful of Sound, the latest film on which he has worked, adopts a non character-based approach in an emotive attempt to engage audiences with the condition of synaesthesia. 

jaime-pardo

Jaime Pardo

Jaime Pardo is an animator, director and educator with over 15 years’ professional animation experience. During this time, he produced a wide variety of projects including children’s television series, commercials, pop promos, natural history series and short films.

Over the years he has won many awards including the BBC Talent New Animation Award and his short films have been screened at renowned international festivals including Annecy, Stuttgart and Encounters.

Careers

Careers

Employability

In addition to developing your capabilities as an animator, our animation course will enable you to develop a wide range of transferable skills, from research and critical thinking, to problem-solving, to communication and negotiation.

You will find career opportunities not only in production, but also in the games industry, television motion graphics, compositing, visual effects and independent filmmaking.

Our graduates have gone on to be employed in Bristol (Aardman, Off The Fence), London (Salmagundi Films, ILM), Leeds (MADE television) and Edinburgh (Rockstar Games), as well as games and post production companies in Europe.

Two students are walking next to each other and smiling

Careers and Employability

Our Graduates pursue exciting and diverse careers in a wide variety of employment sectors.

Find out how we can support you to achieve your potential
Costs

Fees and funding

Full-time tuition fees

UK and EU students

The Government has announced that it will increase tuition fees and maintenance loans by 3.1% from the 2025/26 academic cycle. Subject to approval, the University intends to increase our tuition fees in line with this and as per our terms and conditions. This means that from September 2025 the standard fee for full-time home and EU undergraduate students enrolling on BA/BSc/LLB degrees and FdA/FdSc degrees will be £9,535 per year.

For more details on course fees, please visit our course fees page.

International students

The standard tuition fee for full-time international students enrolling on BA/BSc/LLB degrees and FdA/FdSc degrees in the 2025/26 academic year is £16,700 per year.

For more details on course fees, please visit our course fees page.

Part-time tuition fees

UK and EU students

The Government has announced that it will increase tuition fees and maintenance loans by 3.1% from the 2025/26 academic cycle. Subject to approval, the University intends to increase our tuition fees in line with this and as per our terms and conditions. This means that from September 2025 the tuition fees for part-time UK and EU students on BA/BSc/LLB degrees and FdA/FdSc degrees will be £1,190.83 per 15-credit module, £1,587.77 per 20-credit module, £2,381.66 per 30-credit module, £3,175.55 per 40-credit module, £3,572.50 per 45-credit module and £4,763.32 per 60 credit module.

For more details on course pages, please visit our course fees page.

Additional costs

Every course has day-to-day costs for basic books, stationery, printing and photocopying. The amounts vary between courses.

If your course offers a placement opportunity, you may need to pay for an Enhanced Disclosure & Barring Service (DBS) check.

Accommodation

Finding the right accommodation is paramount to your university experience. Our halls of residence are home to friendly student communities, making them great places to live and study.

We have over 1,000 rooms across our range of student halls. With rooms to suit every budget and need, from our 'Traditional Halls' at £131 per week to 'Ensuite Premium Halls' at £228 per week (2025/26 prices).

For full details visit our accommodation page.
How to apply

How to apply

Applying through UCAS

Please visit the individual joint honours course pages for links to UCAS:

UCAS is the central organisation through which applications are processed for entry onto full-time undergraduate courses in Higher Education in the UK.

Read our How to apply pages for more information on applying and to find out what happens to your application.

Get in touch

If you have any questions, please get in touch. We're here to help you every step of the way.

Admissions Office

admissions@worc.ac.uk
01905 855111

Omid Ghanat-Abady

Course leader
omid@worc.ac.uk
01905 85 5287

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