Join our Game Art degree and develop your creative capabilities while honing the skills you’ll need to make it as a successful artist in the games industry. You’ll study game art principles alongside traditional art practice, building your expertise to contribute to a major game development project in your second and third year.

As a game artist, you'll be joining one of the fastest growing sectors of the games industry, and be in higher demand than ever before. On this course, you'll work within game development teams and graduate as a skilled, industry-ready game artist.

You will:

• Learn about concept art, character art and environment art as well as the pipelines and processes used to make games.
• Work in an industry-standard environment with access to Cintiqs.
• Make complete games by working in multidisciplinary teams and collaborating in engines like Unreal and Unity.
• Acquire the skills you need to make a successful career from your artistic talent.
• Be surrounded by people who live and breathe games.
• Master a range of industry-standard tools used to produce game art including ZBrush, Maya, Substance Painter and Marmoset.

What you'll learn

You'll explore the principles of game art in the context of traditional art practice, combining subjects like landscape painting with advanced Photoshop, concept art with critical analysis, and life drawing with 3D modelling. We'll also build your expertise in concept, character and environment art, agile project management, and development pipelines and processes.

Focused on industry practices, much of your learning will come from working in game development teams – devising and developing real games using real-world practices.

How you'll learn

You'll learn through lectures, seminars, workshops, group and individual tutorials, and tutor and peer feedback on your work. Our guest lecture series is your chance to hear industry professionals talk about their work, their approaches, and the lessons they've learned.

As you progress through your Game Art degree, you'll focus and develop a distinctive practice. With your basic skills in place, you'll be able to work and experiment within game development teams – meaning you can apply your practice to professional game making.

Facilities

• XSens MVN Awinda motion capture suits.
• Large studio equipped with regularly updated, state-of-the-art game development machines.
• Life drawing studio for artists and weekly life sessions.
• Specialised computing hardware for game development, motion capture and immersive experiences.
• Standard packages used in software development for the games and visual effects industries, including Adobe and Autodesk suites.
• Attached lab committed to staying at the cutting edge - featuring AR, VR and MR (XR) equipment including HoloLens, HoloLens 2 and Oculus Quest 2.
• Attached lab with access to PS4 development and testing kits.
• Access to a variety of game engines including Unity and Unreal.
• Studios open late during term time.
• Access to free software via Microsoft Imagine.
• Industry-standard game engines including Unity and Unreal 4.
• Industry-standard software including Maya, Zbrush, Blender and the Adobe Creative Suite.
• Technicians on-hand during opening hours to assist with the different tools.