Video Games Digital Art BA (Hons)

Birmingham City University

Interactive entertainment and video games development are key sectors for contemporary culture, economic growth and employment locally in the Midlands, nationally and globally.The BA Video Game Art undergraduate course responds to this growing and innovative sector by developing skilled, team-orientated, reflexive graduate professionals ready to succeed.This accelerated two-year course gives you a guaranteed video game development placement in our in-house studio, which will take place over the summer term of the course. The workplace simulation approach of our department (NTI Birmingham) has been championed by the influential 2009 Livingstone Next Gen Report, which cited us as a national best practice example for developing new talent for the games industry.What's covered in the course?The course covers both core and technical art skills. It starts with helping you develop your core art skills, so expect to be doing a lot of drawing and studying topics including colour theory, composition, value and tone. Technical and digital art skills will focus on 2D and 3D graphics covering, texturing, user interface design, environment art, character art, animation and art pipelines for interactive products.In your the first year you will be tasked with a specific role within our in-house game development studio over the summer term. This work experience gives you the opportunity to apply the knowledge and professional practices you’ve learnt on the course in a safe and supportive environment. Typically for these projects you’ll be using industry-standard game development tools such as Unity and Unreal. These summer projects have in the past been mentored and supported by major external partners including. Throughout the two years of your course, you will be provided with a structured programme of learning, in line with your chosen specialism of video game art. The course culminates with a project you define yourself which targets a specific subsector of the games industry, such as character art, concept art, environment art or user experience (among others). You have the choice of either proposing your own individual project or collaborating with other students to create another video game project for your portfolio.Teaching takes place in a modern production studio based in Birmingham City Centre where you’ll be provided with studio space to complete projects and a laptop with all the software you’ll need for the duration of the course.You will be taught by staff with significant experience in the video game development industry, having worked with major game developers.So, by the time you graduate, a whole year before most students, you’ll have two years of tangible, games development studio experience under your belt, well placed to launch your dream career in games.